The Met Gala is an annual fundraising gala to benefit the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The theme of the gala always matches the theme of the Costume Institute's exhibition. The Met Gala is known as one of the most exclusive social events in New York. Anna Wintour has been the chair of the event since 1995 and oversees the benefit committee and the guest list. It is reported that it costs over 2 million dollars to create the Met Gala and Anna Wintour has raised over 186 million for the Costume Institute over the years.
Last year's theme was Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination. The Met website describes this theme as, "a dialogue between fashion and medieval art from The Met collection to examine fashion's ongoing engagement with the devotional practices and traditions of Catholicism." Inside the exhibit, there are actual gowns from the Vatican enclosed behind glass casings. Many high profile celebrities dressed to the theme perfectly some even dressing like fallen angels, such as Kate Moss.
The theme of the Met's 2019 Costume Exhibition is "Camp: Notes on Fashion." And by camp, they mean exaggerated fashion. Camp fashion, as Vogue describes it, can be humorous or even extreme. The theme will bring out fashion that is questionable or even politically aimed. The theme comes from Susan Sontag's essay "Notes on Camp," where she brought up the subject—which she defined as the "love of the unnatural . . . style." In her essay, Sontag gives 58 definitions of Camp to provide clearer examples, one of which being, "Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a "lamp;" not a woman, but a "woman." Many are excited to see how Rihanna and Lady Gaga will dress since they always follow the theme immaculately. The Met Gala will take place on May 6, 2019
The actual exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum of Art will explore how irony, humor, parody, theatricality, and exaggeration are expressed in fashion. It will feature both men and womenswear with fashion by designers such as Virgil Abloh, the late Karl Lagerfeld, and Alexander McQueen. Many travelers visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the Costume Exhibition and this one is sure to bring in a lot of attention because of its complexity to those who don't necessarily know what Camp means if they haven't really researched it.
