What's the Tea: Notes on Camp

A woman walks around in a dress made of three million feathers. Most people stare. Susan Sontag took notes. Fifty-eight of them.

The Tea

In 1964 Sontag published "Notes on 'Camp'," her attempt to pin down a sensibility that runs on artifice, exaggeration and play. She admitted the job was slippery from the first line: to snare a sensibility in words, you have to be tentative and nimble. She dedicated the essay to Oscar Wilde, which tells you most of what you need before note one.

A little history

Camp is a way of seeing the world as pure style. Not beauty. Artifice and stylization, savored on purpose. The word was already in the Oxford English Dictionary by 1909: ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical. Sontag gave it a canon. Tiffany lamps. Feather boas. Swan Lake. King Kong. Art Nouveau everything. Her best distinction is naive camp against the deliberate kind. The Art Nouveau craftsman coiling a snake around a lamp is not kidding. He means it, sincerely and completely, and that sincerity is exactly what makes it camp. Camp that knows it is camp, she warned, is usually less satisfying. And the whole thing runs on love, not mockery. Camp is generous, a mode of enjoyment rather than judgment, and its most famous verdict is the one every vintage dealer secretly lives by: it's good because it's awful. In 2019 the Met built an entire gala and exhibition, Camp: Notes on Fashion, around her fifty-eight notes. Feathers were present.

Bringing it home

Camp at home is a matter of dosage. One theatrical piece per room, and let it be sincere. A lamp shaped like a palm tree works because its maker was in earnest. Pair the extravagant with the plain, a fringed and feathered something against a quiet sofa. Mirrored, gilt, pink glass, anything with fronds. The test is Sontag's. If you love it without a smirk, it counts.

From the floor

If you want to try the dose, start with the white palm-frond table lamp in the style of Serge Roche on the floor at Valencia. Plaster fronds, full theatre, dead serious about itself. Sontag would have taken it home. She would also have stopped at these on the way out:

  • Red Faux-Coral Branch Chandelier in the Style of Tony Duquette: coral that never saw the ocean, wired for light. Naive camp's whole argument, hanging from a chain. (Valencia)
  • Italian Tole Painted Flower Chandelier: a painted metal garden in pink, red, ochre and cream. Probably Italian, unmarked, sincere to the last petal. (Valencia)
  • MarCo-Signed Nose Plaque, Likely Gilt Ceramic, c. 1980s: a gilt nose for the wall. Sontag's verdict stands: good because it's awful. (Valencia)
  • Giant clam shell: nearly thirty inches of open clam at the showroom, likely Tridacna gigas. Nature doing Art Nouveau without being asked. (Noe)
  • Ceramic Reclining Cat on Patterned Cushion and Tufted Pouf: a cat on a cushion on a pouf. Three layers of theatre, and it means every one of them. (Valencia)

That's the tea, served hot. Feathers optional, but encouraged.

What is the one thing in your home you love without a smirk?

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