Get Ready For Some Fashion: The Met Gala Is Monday Night
April 30, 2017, noon
Tickets, which cost $30,000, were reportedly very hard to come by this year.
On May 1, the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art will become the world's most vertiginous red carpet, as the museum's Art Costume Institute's annual gala will be held, with a bevy of celebrities and the fashion industry's A-list: The party, for the new exhibition, about Rei Kawakubo and her line, Comme de Garçons, is co-chaired by Katy Perry, Pharrell Williams, and Anna Wintour.
The gala is known as the "Party of the Year," and the Times explains, "Ms. Wintour, the editor of American Vogue and the artistic director of Condé Nast, took over as chairwoman of the gala in 1999. Since then, she has been instrumental in transforming a local philanthropic event into the ultimate global celebrity/power cocktail: Take a jigger of famous names from fashion, add film, politics and business, and mix. It’s such a heady combo that President Trump proposed to his wife, Melania, during the gala in 2004. (In case you are wondering: No, they are not expected this year.) It is among the hardest party tickets of the year to get — and thus, intensely coveted."
Don't start your #FOMO yet: Page Six helpfully explains, "[j]ust because you have the pedigree and money — tickets start at $30,000 per person and, according to sources, go as high as $50,000 — doesn’t mean you’re invited."
That’s true even if you’re one of the 100 members of the Friends of the Costume Institute, the committee that helps raise funds for the center.
“Anna is extremely restrictive on who can buy a ticket,” said a socialite, who has attended the event for years. “Many people I know who are Friends, [and] who have the money to pay, have been turned down. Anna decides they can’t go. Period.”
Now, “there aren’t as many tickets for them,” she said. “Plus, the Friends tickets cost more. I think [the Gala team is] more concerned with getting celebrities to fill the seats. [Vogue contributing editor] Lauren Santo Domingo and [Estée Lauder creative director] Aerin Lauder will get to go. But I know at least 10 people who are Friends who were told no.”
“I know people [on the Friends committee] who get really frustrated that they can’t bring their husbands,” added Cameron Silver, founder of luxe vintage shop Decades in Los Angeles, who has been to the gala five times. “It becomes a very expensive girls’ night out.”...
“Project Runway” star Tim Gunn dished on E!’s “Fashion Police” that his invitation was rescinded when he told The Post in 2006 about watching Wintour being carried down five flights of stairs at a fashion show by two bodyguards. After being asked by Vogue flacks to make a retraction — and refusing — Gunn claimed he had officially become persona non grata: “We’ve had an open war ever since.”
But it's totally fun to be at home—because you can make memes!
Or wait for gossip to come out the next day. The most famous post-Met Gala incident is, of course, the surveillance footage of Solange attacking Jay Z in the elevator of The Standard Hotel—with Beyonce observing—as they headed to a post-Met Gala party.
The video shattered the image of Beyonce and Jay Z's seemingly happy marriage. But then Beyonce literally made Lemonade from the situation... so things worked out okay? (Except for the fired Standard employee who leaked the tape, though he/she probably got money from TMZ.)
Last year's Met Gala is also where Hiddleswift was sparked, and it may also be where Tom Hiddleston's dreams of becoming James Bond died.
In the end, the night is really to promote fashion (or cutting-edge floral maternity wear), and Kawakubo is the rare living designer to be honored with a show (the last was Yves Saint Laurent in 1983). Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton called her "one of the most important and influential designers of the past 40 years. By inviting us to rethink fashion as a site of constant creation, recreation, and hybridity, she has defined the aesthetics of our time."
Rei Kawakubo / Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 4 and runs through September 4. There is a members' preview on May 2 and May 3.
