On Monday May 6, the illustrious event known as the Met Gala took place. Known as being one of the most highly-anticipated fashion events of the year, the Met Gala boasts glamorous outfits with exciting and new themes, attended by some of the most famous celebrities in the world. Millions of people invest their time into fawning over the outfits and the event itself. But what exactly is the Met Gala?
The Met Gala, also commonly referred to as “fashion’s biggest night,” is both a glamorous event and social gathering and an annual fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, where the event also takes place. Traditionally, the Met Gala has different themes each year to challenge fashion presentation and norms and create space for new and interesting fashion trends. Though it varies from year to year, approximately 450 celebrities, young creatives, and industry professionals attend each year’s event, with some longtime attendees including Blake Lively, Rihanna, and Sarah Jessica Parker.
Editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, Anna Wintour, is responsible for not only hosting this event, but also maintaining the invitation list. Each year, Wintour is joined by celebrity co-hosts. Co-hosts have become a tradition at the Met Gala. This year’s co-hosts include Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny, and Chris Hemsworth. Co-hosts of the Met Gala typically include huge stars and big names in Hollywood. Last year Dua Lipa, Michaela Coel, and Roger Federer were co-hosts of the event.
The Met Gala is revered for traditionally having themes for its guests each year. The themes are chosen to inspire ways to showcase extravagant fashion. While the Costume Institute exhibit at the Met this year is Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” the dress code and general theme of the Met Gala is the “Garden of Time.”
On the title of the exhibit, Andrew Bolton, head curator of the Anna Wintour Costume Center at the Met, says that older pieces will be “reawakened” for visitors to view in the museum. He told Fashionista magazine, “When a costume comes into the Met’s collection, it’s changed irrevocably. It can’t be worn, obviously, so you don’t see the movement, you can’t smell it, you can’t hear it, you can’t touch it. A lot of the sort of sensorial access we have to garments are diminished. In a sense we’re left with really a sight. The idea for this exhibition is to reawaken the sort of sensorial capacities within fashions through various technologies.”
This year, attendees included Nicole Kidman, in Balenciaga, Lil Nas X, in Luar, Lana Del Rey, in Alexander McQueen, and Ariana Grande, in Loewe. Grande performed during the event itself, singing a medley of her popular hits. She was later joined by Cynthia Erivo to sing “When You Believe” by Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. Grande and Erivo will be starring as Glinda and Elphaba respectively in the upcoming Wicked films based on the Broadway show of the same name. Overall, it was a fun and eventful night for fashion.
