The Met Gala — fondly referred to as “fashion’s biggest night out” — will take place Monday. The theme? “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.”
For the event, Hollywood stars, business moguls, top musicians, fashion icons and even politicians gather at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to raise money for the museum’s Costume Institute.
This year, the event, which is pretty much a de facto fashion show, aims to highlight immersive garments, the renewal process and historical pieces, as well as fashion pieces that have been laid to rest, according to a press release from the Met.
“Punctuating the exhibition will be a series of ‘sleeping beauties’ — garments that can no longer be dressed on mannequins due to their extreme fragility — that will be displayed in glass ‘coffins’ allowing visitors to analyze their various states of deterioration as if under a microscope,” the press release said.
There will be roughly 250 rare items from the Costume Institute on display, spanning four centuries of fashion history, per Vogue. Extremely fragile pieces will be creatively displayed through video animation, CGI, artificial intelligence and light projection.
In 1995, Anna Wintour — the global editorial director of Vogue — took over as a co-chair of the Gala. For nearly three decades, Wintour has upheld a strict list of meticulous rules to maintain the event’s posh, exclusive culture.
Here are six interesting rules for Met Gala guests and everything else you need to know about the event (time, theme, hosts, how to watch and the guest list).
Rules of the Met Gala
1. Attendees must pay for their Met Gala ticket
If you make Wintour’s carefully crafted guest list, you are still required to purchase a ticket to the event.
A ticket to the 2024 Met Gala costs $75,000 — up 50% from last year’s ticket price of $50,000, per Time. A table, which is commonly purchased by a brand or business, costs $350,000.
2. You cannot post on social media from inside the Met Gala
The Met Gala enforces a no-phones policy. This rule also means no social media posts from within the gala — though celebrities often toe the line when it comes to posting bathroom selfies from within the event, per Vogue.
3. Your Met Gala look must be preapproved
Every Met Gala look requires Wintour’s stamp of approval well in advance of the event.
“Anna (Wintour) is meticulously vetting every single thing, from the napkins to the forks to the lighting. The detail of the flowers, the detail of the ushers, how they’re dressed, everything has been vetted for months and weeks and months and weeks,” former Vogue contributing editor Andre Leon Talley explains in the documentary “The First Monday in May.”
4. Certain foods are banned from the menu
Foods like onions and garlic are allegedly not allowed to be served at the Met Gala because they can cause bad breath, a former Vogue employee told the New York Post.
Parley is also shunned because it can easily get stuck in your teeth, and appetizers like bruschetta won’t make the menu because they spill easily and could damage a gown.
The food must look presentable in addition to tasting good.
“We see Anna literally going on her phone to look up the presentations of different food,” Andrew Rossi, the director of “The First Monday in May,” told the New York Post.
“The level of detail is shocking.”
5. You must adhere to a carefully designed seating chart
Organizers begin designing the event’s seating chart in December, but the plans are not finalized until roughly a month before the Gala, a longtime Met Gala organizer, Eaddy Kiernan, told Vogue in 2023.
“We really try to think very carefully about who’s sitting next to each other. Our ideal pairing would maybe be two people who we think will just get on like a house on fire but who may not even realize that they have a lot in common,” Kiernan said, per Vogue.
“We try and think a lot about sight lines and where people have sat in the past. And we try to make sure someone isn’t staring into the eyes of a former flame.”
Organizers never seat married couples next to each other, according to the documentary “The First Monday in May.”
“The whole point of these things is to meet new people, and to be interested in what others are doing. What’s the point if you come here to hang out with your husband?” Sylvana Ward Durrett, Vogue’s director of special projects, explains in the doc.
6. You can get banned from the Met Gala
If you fail to adhere to the rules of the Met Gala, you risk getting banned.
According to Today, the following celebrities have been banned from returning to the event:
- Donald Trump.
- Tim Gunn.
- Lili Reinhart.
- Demi Lovato.
- Amy Schumer.
- Tina Fey.
When is the Met Gala?
Per tradition, the Met Gala is held annually on the first Monday in May. The 2024 Met Gala is on Monday, May 6, in New York.
The red carpet livestream of the event begins at 4 p.m. MDT, per Vogue.
What is the 2024 Met Gala theme?
“Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.”
“The show will explore cyclical themes of rebirth and renewal, breathing new life into these storied objects through creative and immersive activations designed to convey the smells, sounds, textures, and motions of garments that can no longer directly interact with the body,” the Met said in a press release.
The dress code for the 2024 theme is “Garden of Time,” which was inspired by a short story of the same title by J.G. Ballard, per Vogue. The story tells of a couple living in a beautiful home, unaware that a mob threatening destruction is moving towards them — reminding readers that beauty is fleeting.
During an interview with the “Today” show’s Jenna Hager Bush, Wintour apologized if the theme “unleashed a lot of confusion.”
She said the theme could elicit a variety of styles. “It’s wonderful and poetic and romantic, but actually, it could be many, many things,” said Wintour, adding, “I imagine we will see a lot of flowers.”
Who is hosting the 2024 Met Gala?
Anna Wintour, Chris Hemsworth, Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez and Bad Bunny will co-host the 2024 Met Gala, per The Met.
Jonathan Anderson, creative director of LOEWE, and Shou Chew, chief executive officer of TikTok, will be honorary hosts of this year’s gala.
Who is going to the Met Gala?
Roughly 450 invitations to the Met Gala are sent to a variety of big names in Hollywood, music, sports, modeling, influence and business each year, per Vogue.
The usual suspects include: Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Blake Lively, Kate Moss, Jared Leto, Harry Styles and the Kardashian-Jenner family. An official guest list is not made public, so you have to wait until the event to see which celebrities show up. But a handful of guests have hinted at attending this year.
Rihanna has already teased her Met Gala look — claiming she’s “keeping is real simple this year,” per People, as opposed to her customary extravagance.
How do I watch the Met Gala?
Livestreams of the event will be provided by a handful of networks.