Who is Andrew Bolton, the brains behind the Met Gala themes? The Costume Institute curator in chief is one of Anna Wintour’s best friends – and one half of ‘fashion’s royal couple’ with Thom Browne

May 10 , 2024

Kim Kardashian and Zendaya may have dominated the headlines at this year’s Met Gala, but one man was working harder than anyone behind the scenes – meet its Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton (pictured). Photo: @globestyle/Instagram

With all the fuss about Kim Kardashian’s corset or Zendaya’s nifty costume change on the world’s most OTT red carpet, it’s easy to forget that the Met Gala isn’t actually about the celebrities.

The event – often dubbed the Super Bowl of fashion – is in fact staged to raise money for the Costume Institute inside New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Home to more than 33,000 items of dress spanning 700 years, according to its website, the institute launches a new exhibition each spring – which is open for the general public to enjoy long after Cardi B has gone home.

And one man in particular is at the centre of it all – dreaming up the theme of each spectacular show and curating it to perfection. That man is Andrew Bolton. Here’s everything you need to know about the 57-year-old “approachable academic” at the heart of fashion’s biggest event.

What is the Met’s Costume Institute’s curator in charge Andrew Bolton’s background?

Andrew Bolton is the curator in charge at the Met’s Costume Institute. Photo: @sarabandefoundation/Instagram

Despite the Hollywood starriness of the Met Gala, it’s in fact two Brits who mastermind the operation each year: Vogue’s global editor Anna Wintour and Bolton. Born in Lancashire in the UK, Bolton – who’s now in his late 50s – was the youngest of three children born to a middle-class Catholic family, he told The New Yorker in 2013.

Chinese photographer Chen Man, Andrew Bolton and patron of the arts Wendy Yu together in Beijing, in 2018. Photo: @wendyyu_official/Instagram

He became obsessed with the British punk movement as a youngster, but never quite made the look work. “I went through a punky stage where I would spike my hair, but I was too clean-cut to pull it off. Whatever I did, I looked preppy,” he told the magazine. He went on to study anthropology before travelling around Asia and returning to do a master’s in non-Western art.

He began working at the Met when he was just 35

Andrew Bolton worked at London’s V&A Museum before moving across the Atlantic Ocean to NYC for a role at the Met in 2002. Photo: @outmagazine/Instagram

After a stint at London’s V&A Museum, Bolton was invited by a friend to lunch with Harold Koda – then-curator in chief of the Met’s Costume Institute – in 2002. Two weeks later, Koda asked Bolton to be his associate curator.

“I remember thinking that this was my dream job, but it’s come too soon – do I have enough experience?” Bolton recalled to The New Yorker. He clearly proved himself worthy of the job, because when Koda retired in 2015, Bolton was handed the torch.

He’s created the most iconic Met Gala themes to date

Andrew Bolton was born to a middle-class Catholic family in Lancashire in the UK and calls himself an “approachable academic”. Photo: @nickcheuk/Instagram

As the Business of Fashion points out, Bolton has been behind some of the most “groundbreaking and innovative fashion exhibitions in the museum’s history”.

Rodarte dresses featured at the Met’s “Heavenly Bodies” exhibition in 2018. Photo: @amagazinecuratedby/Instagram

From his Alexander McQueen retrospective in 2011 (curated with Koda) and “China: Through the Looking Glass” in 2015 to the memorable “Heavenly Bodies” in 2018 that featured objects from the Vatican collection, the exhibitions have gone on to sell over a million tickets.

His partner is the fashion designer Thom Browne

Fashion designer Thom Browne and Andrew Bolton walking their dog Hector. Photo: @hyeongsin.kwak/Instagram

According to The Washington Post, Bolton has been with his partner, the fashion designer Thom Browne, since 2011. The pair live in a Georgian mansion in Manhattan with their dachshund Hector.

“They’re fashion’s royal couple,” a CBS News contributor who hosts conversations at the Costume Institute told The Washington Post. “And they don’t see themselves like that, which is a beautiful thing.”

He’s one of Anna Wintour’s closest friends

Andrew Bolton with his CFDA Founders Award, presented by his fashion tastemaker friend Anna Wintour. Photo: @cfda/Instagram

It’s no secret that famously frosty Wintour is a tough nut to crack, so the fact that she called Bolton “my collaborator and wonderful friend” at the 2022 CFDA Fashion Awards is high praise indeed.

“It’s rare to find someone so creative that they change the way you look at art,” she said of Bolton in the documentary The First Monday in May.

Similarly, a former Costume Institute employee recently told The Cut that if Bolton was struggling with a difficult curatorial decision, he would simply step back and ask, “What would Anna think?”

Icons and Influencers

Bolton, curator in charge of the Met’s Costume Institute, is behind the museum’s most successful exhibitions of all time, including its Alexander McQueen retrospective (2011) and ‘Heavenly Bodies’ (2018)
Born in Britain, the 57-year-old began working at the Met in 2002 and took the top job in 2015, settling down in New York where he lives with American fashion designer Thom Browne