The Met Gala is fashion’s biggest event, and this year it will take place on Monday, May 6 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The annual fashion extravaganza is held each year on the first Monday of May and is a fundraiser for the museum’s Art Costume Institute.
This event was founded by publicist Eleanor Lambert in 1948, with the ticket sales funding the opening exhibition, and at the same time celebrating it. The Met Gala started out as a dinner served at midnight and guests could attend by purchasing a $50 ticket. Money from the purchases went towards the costume section of the museum.
Since 1995, the event has been given a unique fashion theme that all guests could follow, but in the years 2000 and 2002, this tradition was interrupted and no theme was assigned. Victoria Arenz, third-year interior design student said, “What I do remember about The Met Gala is how much I liked last years red carpet looks, especially the ones from Versace.”
The theme for this year’s Met Gala is “Camp: Notes on Fashion” and was inspired by Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay ‘Notes on Camp.’
Sontag’s essay talks about camp being “Love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration,” and “One’s way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way, the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of artifice, and stylization.” With this theme, spectators can look forward to over-the-top, unique, humorous and iconic looks.
This year’s hosts are Harry Styles and Lady Gaga accompanied by co-hosts, Alessandro Michele, Gucci’s creative director and tennis professional Serena Williams.
The exhibition that will be honored will include more than 200 pieces of fashion in both menswear and womenswear, sculptures, paintings and drawings from the 17th century through contemporary times. It will showcase pieces from iconic designers Karl Lagerfeld, Rei Kawakubo, John Galliano and Alexander McQueen. Even garments from Viktor and Rolf’s most recent haute couture collection will be on display, which featured gowns that displayed memes and pop slogans as part of their designs.
Overall, the costume institute’s exhibition will demonstrate how characteristics of theater, irony, humor and parody are utilized throughout fashion. There will be other sections that will include items from the Court of Versailles, and how camp was used in queer communities and subcultures of America and Europe from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition will take the viewer through camp’s origin and history, and explore how it can be seen through fashion.
Andrew Bolton, Costume Institute Curator said, “We are going through an extreme camp moment, and it felt very relevant to the cultural conversation to look at what is often dismissed as empty frivolity but can be actually a very sophisticated and powerful political tool, especially for marginalized cultures.”
Robbie Tubbs, third-year fashion marketing and management student said, “The Met Gala is the only time of the year I get theatrics from major artists and game-changers. It’s the one event that stays true to its roots and hasn’t become so diluted like many of the fashion weeks and shows.”
