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The annual Met Gala proves that fashion comes first for many US celebrities as it provides a perfect platform to show off their most extravagant sense of style.
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The much-hyped party at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is an annual star-studded fundraising soirée for its Costume Institute so it’s perhaps fitting, no pun intended, that ‘Fashion is art’ is this year’s theme and dress code.
Last year, was the exclusive event’s most lucrative as it collected around €31 million.
Fortunately for those paying the extremely high entry price (if you have to ask, you can’t afford it honey*) no decisions have to be made now as the ball takes place on 4 May.
Until then, anyone seeking inspiration can look to the style council who’ll be co-chairing the night with Vogue’s Anna Wintour steering the proceedings alongside Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman and Venus Williams.
Joining the top co-chairs is a “host committee” led by Belgian-Italian designer Anthony Vaccarello, creative director of Yves Saint Laurent, filmmaker Zoë Kravitz. It also includes famous stars such as Sabrina Carpenter, Teyana Taylor, Lena Dunham, Angela Bassett and athlete Aimee Mullins.
Regular readers will know that the evening also serves to launch the Met’s annual spring fashion exhibition.
The show will be the biggest, in terms of objects, that the institute’s ever done: nearly 400 in total, or 200 garments and 200 artworks from around the museum, placed in pairs.
Andrew Bolton, curator of the Met’s Costume Institute, described the show which seeks to present fashion as a through-line in the entire history of art as “ a beast.”
The idea, he noted, is to examine “the dressed body” in all its aspects, and to make the point that not only is fashion art — something previous shows have shown — but that art is fashion. “It’s reversing what we’ve done before,” Bolton says. “Now we’re looking at art through the lens of fashion.”
What that means, in practice, is that you might see an art object in a glass case — say, a vase from ancient Greece. Displayed above the case will be a garment from the museum’s vast costume collection, echoing the fashion on figures in that vase.
*Really, how much does it cost? Generally companies buy tables. A fashion label would then host its desired celebrities. Tickets have in the past cost $50,000 (€49,000) for an individual, and $300,000 (€281,000) or more for a table!
Costume Art will run from May 10 through Jan. 10, 2027