All eyes are on the Met Gala, the charity event known for celebrities flaunting artistic outfits catering to a particular theme each year. Here’s everything you need to know about it:
What is the Met Gala?
The Met Gala, which has been organised and presided over by Anna Wintour since 1995, has become a much-loved annual fashion spectacle. The Met Gala is a charity event held to generate funds for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. It is generally held to coincide with the opening of the museum’s annual fashion show. The event raises eight-figure sums year after year, according to a report by Vogue.
What Happens at the Met Gala?
After the much-awaited posing by celebrities at the Gala with creative costumes in accordance with the theme each year, no one exactly knows what happens after. Vogue says it’s a ‘secret’ but according to the Cosmopolitan, there are a couple of events that take place.
The Cocktail Party
Following the red carpet, celebrities and guests mingle during a cocktail hour before touring the exhibition, which this year is titled “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty.”
Dinner
After viewing the exhibitions, the Dinner Celebs sit down for a formal dinner with allocated seats, which is a nightmare to manage given everyone’s expectations, the report says.
Entertainment
Every year, at least one fancy performer puts on a show at the Met Gala (Vogue adds that “the event usually involves a high-profile performer”), but the evening finishes fairly early, allowing stars to change dresses and join the after-parties.
Where does the Met Gala take place?
Every year on the first Monday of May, the Met Gala is held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Who attends the Met Gala?
The attendee list is kept under wraps until the evening before the function. However, some of the industry’s biggest names, including Beyoncé and Lady Gaga, as well as Madonna and Rihanna, regularly attend. Designers frequently attend alongside their muses, such as Marc Jacobs and Kate Moss, or Nicolas Ghesquière and Emma Stone. Around 600 people usually attend the event. Every year, the event attracts celebrities, young creatives, and industry titans.
What is the Theme this Year?
While previous themes like “camp” and “punk” have given attendees a lot of creative freedom, this year’s theme honours a person rather than a concept: “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty” is meant to pay tribute to the late designer, who died in 2019 at the age of 85, according to a report by CBS News.
As Chanel’s long-time creative director, he is largely credited with revitalising the fashion brand, and he was known not only for haute couture but also for his numerous controversies involving statements he made about women, immigrants, and other marginalised groups.
Why is this Year’s Met Gala Theme Problematic?
At the announcement of Lagerfeld as the 2023 theme last November, actress Jameela Jamil took to Instagram to express criticism at the selection, writing, “This man… was indeed, supremely talented, but used his platform is such a distinctly hateful way, mostly towards women, so repeatedly and up until the last years of his life, showing no remorse, offering no atonement, no apology, no help to groups he attacked… there was no explanation for his cruel outbursts.”
Who Was Karl Lagerfeld?
Karl Otto Lagerfeld was born in 1933 in Hamburg, Germany. His foray into fashion began in the early 1950s, when he saw a Dior show that piqued his interest in creating. In 1952, he moved to Paris and won first prize for a coat design in what is now known as the International Woolmark Prize, attracting the attention of European fashion giants, CBS News says its report.
Lagerfeld worked as a freelance designer for well-known labels such as Chloé and Valentino before being employed as a consultant director by the Italian luxury house Fendi in 1967.
He is best known for being the creative director of Chanel from 1983 until his death, as well as having his own apparel and accessory businesses.
Why Was he Problematic?
Lagerfeld courted controversy throughout his career, despite creating a prodigious legacy with his work at Chanel, Chloé, Fendi, and his own label, according to SBS.
“He offended people right and left, making as much of an art out of the cutting aside as the perfectly cut double-face gown,” Vanessa Friedman, a New York Times fashion writer, wrote following his death.
Lagerfeld wrote “The Karl Lagerfeld Diet,” a diet book, in 2005, detailing his experience reducing 92 pounds in just over a year.
He was outspoken on the link between fashion and body image, claiming that junk food and television were more detrimental than anorexia and calling fashion “the healthiest motivation for losing weight” in his book. He frequently made unsolicited comments about women whose bodies he felt did not meet a certain standard of modelesque beauty. He declared award-winning artist Adele “too fat,” then apologised, saying he mistook her for another singer, Lana Del Rey.
In a 2009 interview with the German magazine Focus, he called supermodel Heidi Klum “too heavy” and stated that “nobody wants to see curvy women.”
While Lagerfeld was well-known for his fatphobic and misogynistic remarks, he also sparked outrage in 2010 by dressing German model Claudia Schiffer in blackface and yellowface for the magazine Stern Fotografie.
On a French talk show in 2017, Lagerfeld called Muslim migrants in Germany a “affront to Holocaust” victims, according to CBS News.
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