In the world of fashion there are few days that come close to the excitement, the glamour and the fashionable know-how of the first Monday in May. Each year, we get to see a host of our favourite designers and creatives address a creative new theme and walk arm in arm up those red carpeted steps of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City – all in the name of fashion and art – at the annual Met Gala.
Since this year's Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty themed Met exhibition, we've been eagerly anticipating news of the Met Gala 2024 theme – and today we have our answer. The Metropolitan Museum of Art shared this morning that next year's theme would be: Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.
What does the Met Gala 2024 theme mean?
According to The Met's press release, Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion will explore notions of rebirth and renewal, using nature as a metaphor for the impermanence of fashion. As always, the 2024 Met Gala theme mirrors the exhibition as imagined by the Costume Institute's curator, Andrew Bolton.
The exhibit intends to challenge the typical still-life type presentation style of most costume museums – reimagining each piece and bringing it to life using artificial intelligence, animation, projections and soundscapes that stimulate the senses.
Speaking on the exhibition, Andrew Bolton said: “We have exhibitions where we try to reawaken costumes in our collection, usually conceptually by interpretation, and by juxtaposing historical and contemporary side by side to sort of mutually inform and enliven each other. But for this one, we wanted to literally reawaken the costumes."
“Nature is such a through line in our collection,” Bolton said. “But also nature, I think, is a broader metaphor for fashion to serve out the fragility and the ephemerality of fashion, but also society, the secular nature of fashion and ideas of renewal and rebirth and regeneration.”
Who will be attending the 2024 Met Gala?
While we don't have a confirmed 2024 guest list as of yet (this is usually publicised much closer to the event date), we have some sneaking suspicions about who might be garnering an invitation next year.
While we'd love to see some of fashion's freshest faces (like Taylor Russell) in attendance, we're sure there will also be a swathe of familiar faces and designers taking to those infamous steps. We'll let you know when we hear more.
