A Look Back at 20 Years of Stunning Met Gala Interiors

Reported by Vogue.

For nearly two decades, event designer Raul Ávila has orchestrated the Met Gala's most jaw-dropping moments—those installations that make guests forget, for a second, that they're walking into a museum. His first assignment, back in 2007, came with explicit pressure: do something nobody's ever seen. The theme was "Poiret: King of Fashion," so Ávila built a 20-foot gilded birdcage for the Great Hall, complete with two live peacocks. (One escaped during setup; yes, there was chaos.) He's been raising the stakes ever since.

The work reads like a fever dream of florals and architectural audacity. In 2019, a 25-foot flamingo made of 30,000 flowers dominated "Camp: Notes on Fashion." For 2018's Catholic-themed gala, he erected a rose-constructed papal crown. A punk-themed bash got a chandelier from London rigged with aluminum "razor blades." These aren't decorations—they're conversations with the exhibition's theme, rendered in impossible scale and materials. According to Vogue, Ávila and the special events team treat each year's transformation as a puzzle: how do you make a museum's most public space feel intimate, surprising, and completely aligned with that season's fashion narrative?

From Narcissus to the Next Frontier

Last year's event, "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style," featured a floating tower of narcissus flowers inspired by artist Cy Gavin's motif of self-recognition—a conceptual leap that grounded the florals in actual meaning rather than mere spectacle. This year, the Temple of Dendur becomes an enchanted forest. The 2026 theme, "Costume Art," drops May 4, and if history is any measure, whatever Ávila dreams up will either terrify or thrill the industry's most discerning guests.

What's remarkable about Ávila's 20-year run is his refusal to plateau. Each installation doesn't just match the theme—it distills it into a physical moment that sets the tone for the entire evening. That's the actual job: making guests feel the exhibition before they've stepped into a single gallery. The Met Gala's interiors are the threshold between fashion as clothing and fashion as art, and Ávila built his career on understanding exactly what belongs in that space.

Read the original at Vogue.