What is the Met Gala?
The Costume Institute Gala at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is the biggest event on the fashion fundraising calendar. Founded by publicist Eleanor Lambert, the benefit was first held in 1948 to encourage donations from New York's high society. In its modern incarnation, the most famous faces from the realms of fashion, film, music and art come together to raise money for the Met's Costume Institute and celebrate the grand opening of its latest exhibition.
The night is centred on the theme of the new exhibition, with previous themes encompassing everything from Manus x Machina and Punk: Chaos to Couture to China: Through the Looking Glass. This year's exhibition theme is Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination
Ann Wintour Centre
Since 1995, the event has been chaired by US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who enlists public figures to serve as the event's co-chairs. Past hosts have included Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Marc Jacobs. The Met Gala 2018, which marks the event's 70th anniversary, will be co-chaired by Amal Clooney, Rihanna and Donatella Versace.
What is the Met Gala 2018 theme?
Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination will feature some 40 Vatican vestments and accessories spanning 15 papacies, which curator Andrew Bolton is said to have visited at least 10 times to secure pieces which have never left the Vatican's possession before. Items such as Pope Benedict XV's white silk cape embroidered with gold thread and the pointed bishop's hat of Pope Leo XIII, will go on display alongside pieces by Coco Chanel, who was educated by nuns, John Galliano, Cristóbal Balenciaga and Donatella Versace, who is a sponsor of the exhibition.
The Met Gala 2018 theme is being cited as the Met's most controversial yet, owing to the positioning of these fashion garments alongside sacred artefacts. Bolton, however, has defended his curation: "Some might consider fashion to be an unfitting or unseemly medium by which to engage with ideas about the sacred or the divine, but dress is central to any discussion about religion," he said at a press conference in Rome. "It affirms religious allegiances and, by extension, it asserts religious differences."
The Met Gala will take place on Monday 7 May
previous attendees
Rihanna
Zayn Malik & Gigi Hadid
Beyoncé at the Met
Lady Gaga
Amal Clooney
Blake Lively
Donatella Versace & Kylie Khardashian
Jennifer Lopez
Zoe Saladana
Lupita Nyongo
