Everything We Know About the 2024 Met Gala and Our Predictions

It’s that time of the year again. On May 6, the stars will align and meet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the highly anticipated 2024 Met Gala. It’s only a matter of time before the streets of lower Manhattan fill up with excited fans hoping to get a photo of their favorite celebrities entering the museum. And sooner than later, our Twitter and Instagram feeds will get flooded with real-time updates on who’s wearing what. Here’s everything to know about the Met Gala and what’s in store for this year’s event.

When was the first Met Gala?

The Met Gala was first hosted in December 1948 by publicist Eleanor Lambert to raise funds for the Costume Institute, a collection of thousands of objects representing seven centuries of fashion history. Today, the institute is part of the museum and hosts an exhibition with themes that usually influence the gala’s dress code. The exhibition dates will be May 10 to September 2. So, of course, the Met Gala, being a charity event for the exhibition, will be hosted only days before the starting date.

What’s this year’s theme?

This year’s exhibition theme is “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.” It will feature 250 items drawn from the Costume Institute’s permanent collection. The core exhibit will encapsulate 400 years of history and include items never seen by the public before, says Vogue. Some garments include a 17th-century English Elizabethan bodice and 21st-century acquisitions by designers like Phillip Lim and Stella McCartney. Last year, Andrew Bolton, Wendy Yu Curator of The Costume Institute, told Vogue that the exhibition would feature 15 historical pieces too fragile to ever be worn again. One of these pieces includes French designer Charles Fredrick Worth’s 1887 ball gown. 

The gala’s dress code will be “The Garden of Time.” As the theme and dress code suggest, this year will be focused on reawakening the dormant beauty of centuries-old fashion and paying homage to the art of clothing conservation. The Met Gala guests are no strangers to this concept, considering that many have already used it in the past. Think Kim Kardashian’s 2022 Met Gala look, where she wore Marilyn Monroe’s dress, or one year later when Dua Lipa wore a Chanel white tweed gown first worn by model Claudia Schiffer in 1992. 

What happens at the Met Gala?

The Met Gala is known for its exclusivity as not everyone can attend. The privilege is usually reserved for the biggest names in the fashion and entertainment industry as well as young creatives.

Unfortunately for us, everyday people, what happens at the Met Gala is just as exclusive as its guest list. As Vogue puts it “In short: It’s a secret.” Be on the lookout for updates on social media as the celebs walk inside the museum. And if you find yourself in lower Manhattan at the time of the event, you might get lucky enough to see them arrive and pose for the paparazzi. 

Who will be there?

This year’s hosts will be Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny and Chris Hemsworth. Being some of pop culture’s hottest names, we can only hope they will show up with their other halves. Zendaya with Tom Holland, JLo with Ben Affleck and Hemsworth with his wife Elsa Pataky. As for Bad Bunny, given his recent alleged split from Kendall Jenner, he might show up alone. Or will he?

What will attendees be wearing?

Given the theme, we might feel tempted to think that guests will show up wearing fairy tale attire. Many of the pieces date all the way back to the 17th century, so an exhibition like this one almost guarantees that there will be at least one princess-y-looking piece. But, there’s more to the theme than the sleeping beauty of it all. 

Like I said, this exhibition highlights the beauty of clothing conservation, so we’re expecting vintage garments and historical looks. We hope designers take advantage of the theme and pull out the best of the best from their archives. Maybe a homage to Dior’s 1947 debut collection, “New Look” or a pair of 1946 Calvin Klein jeans, since he marked fashion history by being the first designer to show jeans on the runway that year– the latter is less likely to happen, but one can dream. 

Honoring vintage fashion is nothing new in the fashion world, but this exhibition’s theme stands out due to the fragility of many of the items. Conserving pieces that date back centuries is no easy job. Temperature, lighting, humidity and even the way you breathe near a garment can damage it if it’s fragile enough. Again, think about what happened when Kardashian wore Monroe’s dress — it was damaged. So, for many, it’s a privilege to be allowed anywhere near these clothes during the exhibition.

For the Met Gala guests who are true fashion enthusiasts, I’m sure it will also be a privilege to collaborate with designers and get to wear, hopefully, well-thought-out pieces. That said, I’ll be watching and healthily judging this year’s looks from the comfort of my less glamorous Philadelphia apartment. If you’re a normie like me, maybe you’ll do the same.