MET IS CALLING - THE BEST PARTY IN TOWN
MAIN PICTURE Italian designer Donatella Versace poses on February 26, 2018, with editor-in-chief of Vogue Anna Wintour and cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Vatican Pontifical Council for Culture, at Rome's Palazzo Colonna at the end of the press conference to present the exhibition "Fashion and the Catholic Imagination."
Pic Rights : The Hollywood Reporter
WHAT IS THE MET GALA'?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art 's Costume Institute Ball, best-known as the Met Gala, is well-regarded as the hottest ticket on the fashion calendar, with only the biggest names in fashion, film, music and the arts invited to walk the red carpet. With a strict dress code based on the museum’s current fashion exhibit, every year there is a fashionable and a parade.
So officially, it’s the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Benefit, a black-tie extravaganza held the first Fashion Department. Unofficially, it is “the party of the year,” “the Oscars of the East Coast”, mostly because of the star quotient and the elaborate red carpet, in which guests pose on the grand entrance stairs to the museum.
This exclusive event is a fundraiser for the museum’s costume division, and is how the Costume Institute obtains the majority of their yearly budget. The Met Gala has been held yearly since 1948, and serves as an opening ceremony for the exhibit which will be featured for the year at the museum.
THEN AND TODAY
Originally, however, the Gala was not to introduce a new exhibit. From the 1940’s until 1971, the Gala was held off-premises in the Waldorf Astoria and various other locations. The event was far less glamorous, and usually consisted of dinner and light entertainment. It was not until 1972 when Diana Vreeland, the editor of Vogue at the time, became a consultant for the Costume Institute and encouraged the group to curate more ambitious pieces. A need for exhibitions of these pieces arose, and thus the Galas were used as a promotional tool as well as a social event for society’s elite.
In 1999, Anna Wintour became chairwoman of the Institute, and began to encourage the attendance of A-list celebrities in addition to those in the fashion industry. As the current editor of Vogue, Wintour used her knowledge of the fashion industry combined with her credibility among Hollywood’s elite in order to transform this blossoming event into the immense spectacle that it is today. She has been instrumental in transforming a local philanthropic event into the ultimate global celebrity/power cocktail: Take the famous names from fashion, add film, politics and business, and mix them to the glamorous cocktail ever.
The themes throughout the years have become increasingly extravagant, featuring early themes such as Untailored Garments (1972), Romantic and Glamorous Hollywood Design (1974), and Costumes of Royal India (1985), to more out-of-the-box themes such as China Through the Looking Glass (2015), Punk: Chaos to Couture (2013), Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy (2008), and last year’s Manus x Machina: Fashion In An Age of Technology (2916).
There were only two times in the Met Gala's History that a living artist has been recognized. the first designer was Yves Saint Laurent, recognized in the 1983 Met Gala titled Yves Saint Laurent. The second time was on 2017 when the rebellious Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo’s exhibit chronicles her career, highlighting the nine themes that define her work and inspire her designs.
The first difference is the nature of the event. Former Vogue editor Diana Vreeland brought new glamour to the Costume Institute when she joined as a consultant in 1972. Vreeland curated some of the most ambitious and heavily publicized exhibitions in its history, and used the gala as an opportunity to inaugurate them. Her themes were exotic and far-reaching : "The Glory of Russian Costume," "La Belle Époque," "The World of Balenciaga" and no detail was ignored.
Anna Wintour, Vogue's current editor, shifted the focus to celebrities when she took over as chairwoman in 1999, recruiting A-list honorary and co-chairs (including Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Tom Brady) and inviting everyone from Lil' Kim to Kim Kardashian to attract more attention to the event. The Vogue team's participation in the planning and execution were the highlight of the 2016 documentary "The First Monday in May".
Today the GALA is a very commercialized kind of a media circus and I'm not sure if one of the guests is really interested in the museum or the exhibition. It seems that their bigger interest is about achieving maximum column inches or Instagram likes and getting on to the best dressed lists. It is about sharing beauty and fashion house campaigns and above all it is about status and power.
It wasn't always on the first monday of may. This tradition only dates to 2005. From 2001 to 2004, the gala was held in late April. Prior to that, the gala was typically held in late November or early December. Things changed when the Institute canceled its scheduled winter exhibition with Chanel in 2000. It was replaced by an exhibition dedicated to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' White House style. The additional time needed to organize it saw the opening pushed back to May 1, 2001, and the gala pushed to April 23. Some years the gala wasn't held at all, most notably in 1963, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and in 2002, following 9/11.
Filling the rest of the seats (only about 600 people were invited in 2015) are brand representatives, emerging designers, and invited patrons happy to spend upwards of $30,000 for a ticket. But this hasn't always been the case. Back then you could buy a $100 ticket.
THE 2018 MET GALA THEME :
'Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination'
While the ball itself is a long-standing tradition that's been in place since 1948, the idea of having a themed dress code was not brought in until the '70s.
The exhibition will feature ecclesiastical garb borrowed from the Vatican, religious art from the Met's own collection and 150 designer garments that pay aesthetic homage to Catholicism. The exhibition will be the Costume Institute's largest exhibition to date, it may also be the most polarizing.
However provocative or not the exhibition turns out to be, it could hardly be more so than the history of fashion's relationship with the Catholic church. From D&G sending religious imagery down the runway to pop stars like Lady GAGA and MADONNA using clothing to set themselves up as new spiritual icons, fashion has long borrowed heavily from the church's rich visual history.
No doubt that First Monday in May will make as big a splash as ever. The gala will be co-hosted by Rihana, Donatella Versace(whose label is co-sponsoring the show) and Amal Clooney. They will be joined by Anna Wintour.