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Beyoncé’s bejeweled skeleton gown is by Olivier Rousteing, the former designer of Balmain, who stepped down from that role last November. He was the first Black designer to lead a major French house and now the rumour mill is going into overdrive that this could be a hint of his return to fashion.
But for now, that’s a wrap. We presume Jeff Bezos has skipped the steps and similar to Mark Zuckerberg snuck in around the back. That in itself says it all!
Thank you for joining us. And enjoy the memes to come.
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We thought Beyoncé and fam would be the last to arrive but surprisingly there are some post-Bey arrivals including Teyana Taylor. The actor has shimmied her way up the steps in a shimmering silver fringed dress.
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Co-chair Beyoncé arrives to Met with Jay-Z and Blue Ivy
The Knowles-Carters are in the building in an extremely alpha family day out. Beyoncé, who is co-chair of the exhibition this year, was always going to put the full stop on the red carpet, her first Met Gala in a decade. She marked it wit an outfit that combines showgirl with what might be the most glamorous ever skeleton. Blue Ivy’s first Met is marked with a white bubble dress but also that classic teenage girl accessory – sunglasses.
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Kendall Jenner is wearing a dress by Zac Posen for Gap Studio. The starting point was said to be a classic Gap white T-shirt that Posen has transformed “into a sculptural statement, inspired by the Winged Victory of Samothrace”. It also offers a hint of a breastplate – an emerging trend we have also seen in designs also worn by Kendall’s sister Kylie Jenner and friend Hailey Bieber.
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Bad Bunny as you’ve never seen him before – as an older man, complete with grey hair and walking stick. Perhaps a comment on ageing in the public eye. Who knows?
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Sarah Paulson has accessorised her Matières Fécales dove grey tulle gown with a dollar-bill eye veil. The brand’s most recent show was titled “The One Percent.” Touché!
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Of course, the inspiration behind Cher’s look is Cher! The singer’s leather corseted dress by Burberry is based on the OG naked Bob Mackie dress she wore to the Met in 1974.
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A ship as a hat and six ladies-in-waiting, Madonna is an art performance in and of herself, in this Saint Laurent outfit. She’s also carrying a bugle. Who knows what it means? The elements – together or apart – are certainly memorable.
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The model and musician Aariana Rose Philip, who has quadriplegic cerebral palsy, has modelled for the exhibition as one of its new mannequins. Speaking on a red carpet live stream, Philip says her involvement has made her “feel really held and recognized and understood, finally, and valued by my industry that I love and I’ve contributed so much to. And it feels like a homecoming, almost. It feels very full-circle, and it feels very aligned.”
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A collaboration with artist Allen Jones and self-described “body based designer/artisan duo” Whitaker Malem, Kim Kardashian’s cyborg-style breastplate makes those worn by Hailey Bieber and Kardashian’s sister Kylie Jenner look like trackies. A for effort.
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A message for the Beyhive – yes, we are still waiting.
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There’s been a lot of mixing “fashion as art” with the body theme of the exhibition here, often through see-through clothes, with visible underwear. Kate Moss, long a fan of a see-through dress, shows her expertise once again, in this floor length lace dress.
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The Olympic freeskier Eileen Gu has been leaving a trail of bubbles behind her on the steps, thanks to her Iris van Herpen dress with an in-built bubble machine.
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A barefoot guest in the shape of Doechii, whose strategically placed fabric and headpiece give the feel of Isadora Duncan meets mermaid. Great stuff.
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As a brand ambassador for Valentino, Colman Domingo is unsurprisingly wearing Valentino, with its harlequin motif his pleated jacket gives a nod towards the “commedia dell’arte.” It is rumoured to have taken 268 hours of work by hand to create. Now that’s no joke!
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Yseult is wearing a sculptural look by the London-based designer Harris Reed complete with an equally sculptural headpiece. The French singer is one of nine “living inspirations” for mannequins in the accompanying exhibition’s “Corpulent Body” section.
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There’s a lot of Italian design talent in this picture. Donatella Versace and Alessandro Michele taking each other to the Met Gala is – as we say in fashion – everything.
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As a woman who dressed as a bug for her latest album Lana, SZA is unlikely to go to the Met Gala in something shy and retiring. This outfit from Bode features layers of sunshine yellow, a cape and a headdress of flowers. Like art, if not (necessarily) directly inspired by it.
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For his first Met Gala appearance, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has skipped the steps. Instead he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, who is wearing Alaia, entered via the back door but have since been pictured chatting inside with guests including the singer Jon Batiste. It’s an unexpected move by the duo who recently sat front row at Prada but most likely they were trying to avoid the protests centered around the event’s honorary chairs, Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos.
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At last year’s Met Gala, Sabrina Carpenter wore a look that felt quite cigarette girl. This year’s choice, by Dior, also has something of the 30s silver screen starlet about it. See beaded headdress and can-can worthy thigh split.
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The dove of peace is an image that came from art – Picasso designed it back in 1949. It might have been an inspiration here for Anne Hathaway’s gown designed by Michael Kors. A rare anti-war symbol in a decidedly unpolitical Met Gala.
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Hailey Bieber’s look is a nod to Yves Saint Laurent’s 1969 couture collection where the designer teamed up with the French sculptor Claude Lalanne to create two moulded gold bodices. Bieber’s take by Anthony Vaccarello is made of 24-karat gold.
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A deconstructed version of a tea dress is an unusual choice for a red carpet – as is long hair held back with a clip – but that’s why it works. A bit Cinderella, a bit Parisian flea market, it’s a great look from Hunter Schafer.
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Heated Rivalry’s Connor Storrie has ditched his demure dinner jacket to reveal a Saint Laurent polka dot top. We haven’t seen the internet in this much of a frenzy over a halter neck top since Timothée Chalamet wore one during the Venice film festival in 2022.
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The Kardashian-Jenner clan have previous with coming to the Met Gala in a naked dress. See Kim controversially in Marilyn Monroe’s ultimate naked dress in 2022. Four years later and her younger sister Kylie Jenner is working the theme. Her dress – designed by frequent collaborator Schiaparelli – features a nude corset complete with nipples and a train that requires the assistance of two men. They certainly know how to make an entrance.
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Olivia Wilde says her Thom Browne look is a “nod to abstract body shapes” as seen in the accompanying exhibition. Guess she’ll be enjoying the dinner standing up.
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Zara aren’t typically known for crinolines but Stevie Nicks’s dress is technically by the high street retailer – albeit through the eyes of John Galliano, who is currently working with them. Much more suitable for the steps of the Met Gala than the offices most Zara items usually find themselves in.
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OK, a clear sub theme is beginning to emerge – sculpture! Here’s Heidi Klum as a living statue. As the kids say, she understood the assignment.
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What it is to be human is looking like a big theme on the Met Gala red carpet – from Janelle Monáe’s AI look to Naomi Osaka’s body dress. Singer Lisa’s outfit – a sort of Miss Havisham wedding dress but with crash-test dummy arms in its headdress – is weird and certainly uncanny.
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After a bit of a safe start, the more unconventional looks are beginning to emerge on the steps. Here’s the theatre producer Jordan Roth in a look by the London-based couturier Robert Wun. His sculptural plus-one is attached via a three strap harness hidden under velvet fabric. Roth says the idea behind the look is that “the sculpture body and the flesh body are interchangeably, inextricably, interconnected”.
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If Pixar made a film with an AI baddie, they might have a costume like this. Janelle Monáe – always someone who loves to delve into the future – has done that this Met Gala by wearing a bunch of ethernet cables, live moss and server wires. It certainly would have been a memorable job for designer Christian Siriano.
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Yes, you are seeing “jeans and sheux” at the Met Gala. The singer Troye Sivan has gone for a full look from Prada.
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As we predicted here is the first “naked dress” of the night. Gigi Hadid’s is by Miu Miu and features some carefully placed flaming motifs. She’s also making the case for sparkly pants. Why not?
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Sarah Pidgeon changed fashion for a minute this year in the outfits she wore as Carolyn Bessette Kennedy in the hit series Love Story. While this outfit is far too bright to be CBK-approved, it’s very fashion – designed by Loewe, and with what appear to be extra sleeves.
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Lauren Wasser, the model and activist with prosthetic limbs known as “the girl with the golden legs” online, goes with the gold theme, in an outfit made by Prabal Gurung.
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Mannequins of the Irish disability advocate Sinéad Burke are included in the accompanying exhibition as part of its representations of the Disabled Body section. For tonight Burke, who became the first little person to attend the Met Gala in 2019, has chosen a black corseted gown with a sheer train that she has been enjoying tossing around dramatically on the steps.
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Katy Perry has also got the mask memo. The internet is describing her look as “giving fencing astronaut”. Let the memes begin.
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Never let it be said that Gwendoline Christie doesn’t stick to the bit. Her Met Gala look, made by her partner, the designer Giles Deacon, was inspired by no less than three artists: John Singer Sargent, surrealist photographer Madame Yevonde, and 70s poet and photographer Ira Cohen. If that wasn’t enough, the mask of her face that Christie is carrying was made by an actual artist – Turner prize winner Gillian Wearing. If this was assessed, Christie would get an A*.
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Luke Evans bringing a look worthy of a Tom of Finland drawing to the Met Gala red carpet is something we can all co-sign. If we have had references to blue chip artists – Singer Sergent, Matisse, Artemisia – it’s even cooler to go counter-culture.
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And here’s the inspiration behind Lena Dunham’s Valentino dress – the painting Judith Slaying Holofernes created by the Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi c 1620. Speaking to Vogue, Dunham says: “I shared that inspiration with Alessandro, but because his brain works in the most magical ways, rather than leaning into the Renaissance garments or the swords or any of it, he was attracted to a particular blood spatter on the neck of Holofernes.” Pinterest could never!
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After a eight-year hiatus, Lena Dunham is back on the Met Gala steps. Tonight she is wearing a striking sequinned and feathered dress from Valentino by Alessandro Michele. Dunham says she wrote “an elaborate fan letter” to Michele in the hope of persuading him to dress her. Much better than a text!
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Shot by arrows, with the claws of a dragon and a hat that looks like a flying saucer, Naomi Osaka’s outfit feels like a tour through the images of art history, but there’s actually more to it than that. The outfit, designed by Robert Wun, has two parts. The tennis pro will later remove the coat to reveal a dress utilising 659,000 stitches of embroidery and thousands of Swarovski crystals illustrating the human anatomy. Talk about acing it.
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Doja Cat loves a theme – especially a Met Gala theme. Remember this is the singer that previously dressed as a cat complete with feline facial prosthetics in honour of Karl Lagerfeld. Tonight she has gone for a look inspired by the ancient Greek statues that feature in the accompanying exhibition. Her modern take is by Anthony Vaccarello for Saint Laurent. On first glance it looks like latex, but it is in fact silicone complete with matching silicone platform mules. We imagine it’s pretty squeaky.
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Part Velázquez, part highwaywoman, Zoë Kravitz’s outfit – created by Saint Laurent designer Anthony Vaccarello – gives good Met Gala. A cursory nod to the theme while also managing to look chic and sexy, 10/10 no notes.
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Here’s a closer look at Charli xcx’s Saint Laurent flower, which is in fact, an iris. Apparently it is a reference to Yves Saint Laurent’s spring/summer 1988 collection where the designer paid tribute to Vincent van Gogh. Speaking to Vogue, Charli says: “My dress tonight has an iris flower made out of resin, stitched on to its center. We’ve tried to kind of mirror that in the makeup by using more sheer and translucent tones to reflect the resin.”
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Back to Sergey Brin – and his lapel. Featuring an Iranian flag, with the lion and the sun symbols there pre-1979 revolution, it’s the first overtly political move at a Met Gala red carpet preceded by the most controversy the event has had for years. Eyes peeled for more.
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Here’s the OG brat, Charli xcx. The singer is wearing a strapless black gown by Saint Laurent with what looks like a glass flower stem blossoming across the bodice.
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Sam Smith’s arrival with designer Christian Cowan is proper Met Gala stuff. This black gown, complete with headpiece designed by Stephen Jones, is inspired by fashion illustrator Erte. The quote on Cowan’s instagram says it all: “art is not a thing; it is a way”. Facts.
Rev Al Sharpton, the 71-year-old civil rights activist, hasn’t necessarily looked at the art theme but his suit with pinstripe sequins looks great and shows that sometimes simple really is the best.
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The tech crowd is probably always going to get excited about a chance to go a bit wild for a fashion red carpet. Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s suit has recreated Matisse-style drawings in blue sequins and he looks very pleased about it. His partner, wellness influencer Gerelyn Gilbert-Soto, is matching, wearing feathers and a clutch bag in the colour of Google.
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Normally celebrities are asked “who are they wearing” on the red carpet. For the French content creator and podcaster Léna Mahfouf tonight that question is: “Whose hands are you wearing?”
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Venus Williams, gala co-chair, in a classic black gown
Co-chair Venus Williams goes for a classic black gown but brings the art reference in her necklace – made by Swarovski, it recreates the one worn by her younger self in Robert Pruitt’s 2022 painting of the tennis star. Sticking to the art theme while also going slightly meta? Top marks.
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A sweet moment between Nicole Kidman and her daughter Sunday Rose before they ascend the Met’s grand staircase. It is Sunday Rose’s first Met Gala and the model is wearing a pretty pink gown by Dior with striking floral appliqué detailing.
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Chloe Malle has been working at Vogue for 15 years, but tonight is her first as head of editorial content. Earlier this week she described her style as if “Katharine Hepburn was a librarian”. We’re sure the late actor would approve of this pretty egg-yolk dress with its delicate cap sleeves.
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And we have our first actual art reference – from Lauren Sánchez Bezos no less. Her dress – by Schiaparelli designer Daniel Roseberry – is a homage to Madame X, the John Singer Sargent painting of socialite Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau from 1884. Causing a scandal at the time for its raunchy nature because the original had one of the straps slipping off, Roseberry and Sánchez Bezos missed a trick there. A real art snob version of the dress would include this detail.
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Co-chair Nicole Kidman arrives in shimmery Chanel
Here comes co-chair Nicole Kidman. It’s her seventh Met Gala and for the occasion she has chosen a shimmering red dress with a frou-frou drop-waist from Chanel. Well, she is an ambassador for the house, after all.
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Anna Wintour is fashionably … on time and in a teal feathered cape
This may be the first time that mineral water has been an accessory at the Met Gala, but if anyone can make it happen, it’s Anna Wintour, the global chief content officer of Condé Nast and co-chair of the Met Gala. The fact that she combines it with an eau de nil feathered cape and trademark bob and sunglasses only makes it more fashion. And more memeable.
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Beyoncé to return to Met Gala after 10-year hiatus
The Met Gala has had many moments over the last 10 years – Gaga in a shocking pink cape in 2019, Kim K in Marilyn’s dress in 2022 – but it has not had Beyoncé. The singer last attended in 2016, but as co-chair, she is back, and arguably the star attraction this year. No wonder when you look back at the outfits she has worn. Mostly designed by Riccardo Tisci when he was creative director at Givenchy, there’s the sheer black lace gown with purple feathers from 2012, the beaded black dress and veil from 2014 (the same night as famous elevator incident), the rubber gown from 2016 and – everyone’s favourite – the sheer, beaded nude bodystocking and side ponytail from 2015. With rumours swirling that the long-awaited rock-influenced Act III album will arrive soon, expect this year’s outfit to be mined for clues by the Beyhive.
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How is this for some next-level nail art? Ashley Graham has gone for silver metallic nails with painted fingers. It works really well against the wet look effect of her dress. That is by the Greek-born, London-based designer Di Petsa, who is known for her sculptural creations, some of which are included in the exhibition.
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Model Ashley Graham is dressed in tasteful neutrals and looks lovely – but her dress is also a convenient foil to notice the “red carpet” this year – which, with its bricks and green-tinged colour scheme, has a very Emerald City vibe.
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There’s a great history of “back view” looks at the Met Gala. See also Beyoncé in 2012 and Kim Kardashian in 2015. Cara Delevingne is at it again Ralph Lauren. A bit gothy but also classy and with a low back, it ticks a lot of boxes.
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We’re starting on a spooky note – with content curator Emma Chamberlain in a dress that looks like it’s melting into the ground, and makeup to match. The art theme is coming through too – with colours worthy of a watercolour box and painterly strokes more usually at home on an ornate picture frame.
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Stars walk the carpet on fashion's biggest night of the year
Hello and welcome to the Met Gala live blog 2026!
Chloe from the Guardian’s fashion desk here. My colleague Lauren and I are here to bring you all the best looks, the possible questionable looks and of course, what everyone is talking about from this year’s extravaganza.
For anyone unfamiliar with the event, a brief recap. For the fashion industry the Met Gala is the equivalent of Hollywood’s Oscars or the Super Bowl. It takes place every year on the first Monday in May to mark the opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute latest exhibition. Anna Wintour, the global editorial director of Vogue and chief content officer at publisher Condé Nast, is responsible for making the Met Gala what it is – namely the biggest party in fashion and a lucrative fundraiser for the Costume Institute.
This year it is even a bigger deal because it will also mark the opening of the Costume Institute’s new home – a 12,000-sq-ft space named the Condé M Nast Galleries after the publisher who made Vogue the fashion bible. Each year the exhibition has a specific theme. This year it is Costume Art which will explore “depictions of the dressed body across the Met’s vast collection, pairing garments with artworks to reveal the inherent relationship between clothing and the body”. You can read more about that here.
The theme of the gala always takes its lead from the exhibition but it is different to the exhibition (yes, we know this is confusing!). This year guests have been given the dress code “Fashion is Art.” The blurb explains this is a moment for attendees to “express their own relationship to fashion as an embodied art form and celebrate the countless depictions of the dressed body throughout art history”.
So what can we expect? Well, some celebrities now consider the body itself an art work so there could be a lot of naked dressing. You can imagine some guests might turn up holding an art work wearing something inspired by said art work. Remember in 1965 Yves Saint Laurent paid homage to Mondrian by creating a series of dresses inspired by his abstract canvases so you never know! Plus, the Met Gala has a reputation for people taking risks on the carpet. Jared Leto dressed as a cat in honour of Karl Lagerfeld in 2023, Katy Perry arrived as a glow-up chandelier for 2019’s Camp theme while Rihanna channeled the pope in a mitre for 2018’s Heavenly Bodies dress code.
As always it is set to be starry as Wintour appoints several co-chairs to assist her in overseeing the event. This year they include Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman and Venus Williams. As Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez have provided the majority of funding for both the exhibition and the gala, they have been given honorary chair titles. This has led to outrage from some activist groups. Our NYC readers may have already spotted anti-Bezos posters calling for a boycott of the gala placed near the museum and on the subway. There is also expected to be some kind of protest outside the event itself, so watch this space.
Meanwhile, some are rebranding it the “tech gala” thanks to several companies hoovering up tickets. At $100,000-ish a pop for an individual ticket (that’s up from $75,000 last year) and tables fetching upwards of $300,000, who else can afford them? Meta, Snapchat, OpenAI, ShopMy and of course, Amazon have all bought tables. Last year’s Met raised a record $31m, now we’re wondering if this year’s could smash that record?
It is important to note that even if you buy a table, you don’t have the final say on who will join you. Instead each guest needs to be approved personally by Wintour. She also suggests various names. While the guest list is not disclosed, we can expect to see appearances from the host committee, this year led by Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello and Zoe Kravitz alongside members Doja Cat, Sabrina Carpenter, Alex Consani, Misty Copeland, Teyana Taylor, A’ja Wilson, Chase Sui Wonder and Sam Smith. Plus would it even be a Met Gala without a Kardashian/Jenner or two, even three?
One person we won’t be seeing however, is New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani. Michael R Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams have all previously hotfooted it up the Met’s steps, but in an interview Mamdani said while he loved the Met his focus is “on affordability and making the most expensive city in the United States affordable, and that’s what I’m looking to spend a lot of my time focused on”. A wise move perhaps, considering the backlash Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got (and still continues to get) when she attended in ‘21 wearing a “Tax the Rich” dress.
Inside guests can expect a look around the exhibition followed by drinks, dinner and a surprise performance. Previous acts include Madonna and Rihanna, this year there are rumours of Bad Bunny, Olivia Rodrigo and even Beyoncé.
OK, the first arrivals are beginning to trickle in. Apparently Wintour considers 10 minutes early, 10 minutes late – that explains the prompt start. Buckle up!
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