The Met Gala’s best and boldest looks, ever – from Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Princess Diana and more
Katy Perry, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Sarah Jessica Parker have all turned heads at the annual fashionistas’ fundraiser – with the cancellation of this year’s Met Gala, here’s some fabulous fashion from years past
The Met Gala might have been postponed, yet its 2020 theme, “About Time: Fashion and Duration”, couldn’t have been more timely.
Andrew Bolton, the “Wendy Yu curator-in-charge”, told Vogue the theme was inspired by Orlando, a 1992 film loosely based on Virginia Woolf’s time-travelling novel of the same name. “There’s no beginning, middle or end. It’s one big fat middle,” he explained, elaborating on the theme’s concept of time. “I always felt the same about fashion. Fashion is the present.”
For the first time in Met Gala history, the annual party-of-the-year that causes New York traffic to slam to a halt transitioned into a digital happening. A Vogue-initiated live stream called A Moment With the Met opened with editor-in-chief and Met Gala co-chair Anna Wintour’s address, followed by a performance by Florence and the Machine. These online efforts were launched to uplift and inspire, as well as gather donations to help fashion industry workers who have been affected the most by the pandemic.
Established in 1948, the traditionally star-studded annual fundraiser of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute is a richly-curated collection of fashion and design that theatre designers look hungrily to for inspiration. The themed exhibit itself has been rescheduled to open on October 29, but with no gala this year for fashionistas to feast upon, STYLE looks back at some of the event’s most iconic moments from over the years.
In 1979, Jackie Onassis attended her first gala wearing a black strapless Valentino silk gown with a matching ruffled wrap.
Princess Diana made her royal entrance at 1996’s Met Gala, wearing John Galliano’s first-ever couture design for Dior, a blue bias-cut camisole dress, styled with her signature seven-strand pearl choker with sapphire and diamonds.
