The theme for the 2024 Met Gala has been unveiled as “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.”
After this year’s spectacular Karl Lagerfeld tribute theme, the annual fundraising gala, which is held annually in benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York City, will return with a brand-new theme on Monday, May 6, 2024.
Next year’s exhibit will feature and be inspired by 250 items from the Costume Institute’s permanent collection, including designs by Elsa Schiaparelli, Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior, and Givenchy, spanning 400 years of fashion.
“This innovative show will push the boundaries of our imagination and invite us to experience many facets of a work, to learn more about its history, and, ultimately, to gain a deeper appreciation of its beauty,” Max Hollein, the Met’s Marina Kellen French director and CEO, told Vogue.
According to the fashion bible, 50 items are so fragile they cannot be worn again, including an Elizabethan bodice and a silk satin ball gown by Charles Frederick Worth from 1877.
The Met is also getting high-tech by using a glass illusion technique to reflect a ghostly figure onstage. AI and CGI will be used to “weave a contextual fabric of understanding around each piece.”
“Fashion is one of the most emotional artistic forms because of its connection to the body. It is imbued with memory and emotions, and we relate to it very much via our senses. One thing I hope this show will activate is that [sensory] appreciation of fashion,” said Andrew Bolton, Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute.
Attendees of the prestigious bash will explore three areas: land, sea and sky.
Sustainability and the environment will be at the heart of the exhibit. The zones will “symbolize the natural materials used within it to create garments.”
“It is very much an ode to nature and the emotional poetics of fashion,” Bolton added.
