The 2024 Met Gala
With the 2024 Met Gala (formally designated the Costume Institute Benefit) rapidly approaching, avid fashion enthusiasts everywhere are speculating about what looks this year’s event will curate. The Met Gala, a massive fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art held almost every year since 1948, hosts elaborate creative themes that inspire some of the year’s best moments in fashion and design. Unlike the Oscars or red carpet premieres, which house more traditional styles, this event aimed at honoring the creativity of the Costume Institute offers celebrities a unique opportunity to explore bolder looks exuding innovation and originality. The fundraiser is at its best when celebrities dress to impress some of the most brilliant minds in the fashion industry; helmed by Vogue’s editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and followed vehemently by millions of design connoisseurs, A-listers better be making a gratifying fashion statement.
While last year’s theme, which honored the cutting-edge designer Karl Lagerfeld, allowed ample opportunity for celebrities to play it safe with their looks — sticking to simple black and white tones that still managed to speak to the concept — this year’s darker, more intricate theme will push even the most reluctant dressers to elevate their looks. Designated “The Garden of Time” in celebration of the spring exhibit Sleeping Beauties: the Reawakening of Fashion, the theme honors the eponymous J.G. Ballard short story and elicits conceptions of transience and the power of nature. The addition of this elegant short fantasy to this theme allows for further development of complexity, painting the tale of a couple who tries to prevent their own demise by harnessing the power to control and thwart time, only to ultimately be subdued by the ungovernable force of nature. Evoking the idea that human control is merely an illusion easily overcome by the inevitability of time and decay, the inclusion of this story within the theme presents a more grisly thread from which to pull outfit inspiration. As described by the Met, the event will be centered around motifs “of rebirth and renewal, using nature as a metaphor for the impermanence of fashion” through unique textures and compositions (1). The intricacy and darker, melancholic tones offered by this theme that specifically emphasize the sensory aspects of garments will hopefully help encourage even hesitant celebrities to be expressive in their fashion choices.
The safest looks permitted by this theme will likely take the form of tasteful florals, drawing on the presence of nature within the story and exhibit to present more conventional looks that still fit within the parameters of the theme. But the more macabre elements inherent to the evening will ensure that even the most basic and uninspiring looks reflect a more provocative element of powerlessness and the cycle of age. The most creative celebrities, however, will easily be able to elevate this theme to new heights, composing striking exhibits of creative fabrics and themes of ephemerality with their fashion. From unbelievably brittle materials to detailed physicalizations of decay, bar-raising outfits will strive to convey the intersecting delicacy of clothing and nature. We’re sure to see interesting elements drawing on an extremely originative theme even across the spectrum of boldness in these celebrity looks.
To read the short story included in this year’s theme, visit https://online.fliphtml5.com/pjla/gwia/#p=1
Strike Out,
St. Louis
Written by: Bea Scanlon
Edited by: Brook Wang
(1) https://www.metmuseum.org/press/exhibitions/2023/sleeping-beauties