A Handy Met Gala Timeline from 1948 to Today
A look back at some of the highlights in the Met Gala’s 89 year history
Reported by Harper's Bazaar.
The Met Gala didn't arrive fully formed as fashion's most theatrical night out. It was built, slowly and then all at once, across nearly eight decades of ambition, grief, money, and extremely good tablecloths. According to Harper's Bazaar, the event traces back to 1948, when legendary publicist Eleanor Lambert — the woman who also founded New York Fashion Week and the Council of Fashion Designers of America — organized a midnight fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria. Tickets were $50. The cause: the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, itself born from a collection of theatrical costumes assembled by Irene Lewisohn starting in 1937.
For decades, it was glamorous but contained. Then Diana Vreeland arrived. The Vogue editor-turned-Costume Institute consultant began introducing themed exhibitions in the early 1970s, and with them, a new kind of cultural occasion. Her 1983 gala for Yves Saint Laurent: 25 Years of Design — the first exhibition ever dedicated to a living designer — saw guests pulling Saint Laurent from their own closets to dress in tribute. The room was draped in the designer's own silk in pinks, oranges, and reds. Tickets were $500. This is, essentially, the Met Gala as we know it.
From Tribute to Spectacle
The milestones that followed read like a greatest hits of fashion history: Princess Diana's sole appearance in 1996, wearing navy Dior by John Galliano with a seven-strand pearl choker; the 1997 Versace tribute, mounted just five months after his murder and raising a then-record $2.3 million; the Jacqueline Kennedy exhibition in 2001, which moved the event to spring for the first time. By 2005, the Chanel retrospective came with a side of controversy — exhibition or luxury ad campaign? — and a $5,000 ticket price. That year also marked the first time the Gala landed on the first Monday in May, the slot it's held ever since.
The cultural temperature kept rising. The 2011 Alexander McQueen retrospective became one of the most visited exhibitions in the museum's history. By 2019's Camp: Notes on Fashion — co-chaired by Lady Gaga and Harry Styles, tickets at $35,000 — it had become the kind of event where the whole internet stopped to render a verdict in real time. The 2023 Karl Lagerfeld tribute pushed tickets to a reported $50,000. This year, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style makes history as the Costume Institute's first exhibition dedicated to menswear — proof that even at 78, the Gala is still finding new territory.
What began as a $50 dinner has become the closest thing fashion has to a shared cultural ritual — and the fact that it's still, technically, just a fundraiser makes it all the more extraordinary.
Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.
