The first Monday in May is the most glamorous night in the fashion industry. Why you may ask? The Met Gala has been held in some form or another since 1948 and has been captivating the world ever since. Since Vogue’s editor and chief Anna Wintour took over the institute in 1995, it has become one of the biggest events in pop culture. The year 2020 is a milestone for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they hold the annual gala, as the institution is celebrating its 150th anniversary. Preparations for the 2020 Met Gala are already underway, with the exhibition’s theme being announced this past week. Andrew Bolton, The Costume Insitute’s Head Curator, announced the theme for the coming year would be “About Time: Fashion and Duration.” Bolton said he wants to reimagine the fashion history as we know it and utilize many pieces from the museum’s extensive archive that spans a century and a half of modern history.
Taking inspiration from the exhibition in the 1992 Sally Potter film Orlando, Bolton said this year’s exhibition will be showcasing fashion as a continuum, using flashbacks and flash-forwards to show how it can be a linear and cyclical concept. Not much has been revealed about how they plan to make this concept come to life, besides the fact that it will be divided into two sections, one white and one black with pieces spanning from the 1870s to 2020. This year’s exhibition is sponsored by Louis Vuitton, the company responsible for making all this magic possible with very generous funding. The co-chairs for this year’s gala will be Nicolas Ghesquiere, Louis Vuitton’s current creative director, Lin- Manuel Miranda of Broadway’s Hamilton, Meryl Streep, Emma Stone, and of course, Anna Wintour.