Met Gala brings Fashion is Art to Manhattan

Hollywood’s biggest names, alongside stars from music, sport and fashion, walked the red carpet on Monday for the Met Gala, Manhattan’s lavish charity ball, which this year explores the meeting point of fashion and art.

Met Gala theme: Fashion is Art

Guests at New York’s biggest social event of the year were asked to dress to the theme “Fashion is Art”, linked to the “Costume Art” exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.

This year’s event drew controversy after Amazon chief Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sanchez Bezos, were named the ball’s principal sponsors and honorary co-chairs, prompting some activists to object to the billionaire couple’s involvement.

The announcement that Amazon president Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sanchez Bezos, would serve as leading sponsors and honorary co-chairs of the gala also sparked criticism, with activists voicing their displeasure at the billionaire couple’s participation.

For fashion devotees, however, the Met Gala - traditionally held on the first Monday in May - remains one of the world’s most significant red-carpet occasions, renowned for its dazzling glamour.

Tennis legend Venus Williams and Oscar-winning actor Nicole Kidman, who are co-chairing the event, were among the earliest arrivals.

Kidman made an impression in a shimmering, long-sleeved red Chanel column gown with broad feather cuffs, while Williams shone in a black dress embellished with Swarovski crystals and an intricate necklace.

Williams, 45, told Vogue that the “look” had been inspired by a portrait of her at the National Portrait Gallery.

Music superstar Beyoncé, another co-chair, had not yet made her eagerly awaited arrival at the event - her first in a decade.

Rapper Doja Cat, one of several members of the gala’s “host committee”, wore a draped Saint Laurent latex gown with a modest neckline - but a slit reaching her waist.

Anna Wintour and the Met Gala fundraising record

The entire evening is, naturally, overseen by Vogue’s global editorial director Anna Wintour - American fashion’s foremost tastemaker, who has led the event for 30 years.

The gala raises money for the Met’s Costume Institute and, this year, brought in a record $42 million (almost €36 million), the museum’s chief executive, Max Hollein, told journalists.

It is also a major social-media spectacle, as stars showcase extravagant “looks” in a contest to create the most eye-catching display.

Last year’s event explored the subversive style of Black dandyism and was a rare Met Gala edition to place men and menswear at the centre of attention.

This year’s exhibition pairs elegant fashion with paintings and sculpture: a Saint Laurent design beside Van Gogh’s “Irises”, or a John Galliano dress for Maison Margiela alongside an ancient statue.

“When I think about the exhibition, if there were one word to describe it, I suppose it would be equity or equivalence, equivalence between works of art,” Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton told AFP. “So there’s no hierarchy between sculpture, painting, fashion, photography, nor is there a hierarchy between bodies, between the classical body or the disabled body,” he added.

Protest

Ahead of the Met Gala, a campaign opposing the participation of Bezos and his wife appeared on New York streets and underground trains, with some calling for a boycott of an event they see as a crude display of immense wealth.

The campaign is led by a UK-founded group called “Everyone Hates Elon” which, as a spokesperson pointed out, “targets other billionaires” as well as Elon Musk, the world’s richest person.

Wintour said today that the couple had “demonstrated with this event that they genuinely care about giving back”.

The Met Gala was first held in 1948 and, for decades, was limited to New York high society - until Wintour turned the party into a high-profile “catwalk” for the rich and famous during the 1990s.

Opening on 10 May at the venerable Manhattan museum, the “Costume Art” exhibition will seek to explore the “dressed body” in artworks across the centuries.