The 2026 Met Gala is coming up on May 4, and the museum has finally revealed the theme for this year’s dress code: “Fashion is Art.”
Well, that’s… ambiguous.
“Hopefully, it will put an end to the rather obsolete ‘Is Fashion Art?’ debate once and for all,” said Met Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton to the Associated Press.
Thom Browne, Andrew Bolton, Anna Wintour (BFA.com)
The Met Gala is, of course, about as formal an occasion as exists outside of a state dinner or a royal wedding, which would typically mean gowns for the women and tuxedos for the men, but, of course, the Met Gala is not your typical black tie affair. It’s the Superbowl of fashion. And the designers who pay top dollar to dress the celebrities on Anna Wintour’s elite guest list are less concerned with etiquette than they are with making as big a splash possible for their brands. And god bless them for it.
This year’s co-chairs are Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour with a “host committee” chaired by Zoë Kravitz, Saint Laurent designer Anthony Vaccarello, Sabrina Carpenter, Teyana Taylor, Lena Dunham, Misty Copeland, Angela Bassett, and Paralympic athlete-turned-model-turned-actor Aimee Mullins.
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- Beyonce at the Met Gala in 20162016 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)
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- Venus Williams at the Met Gala in 2022
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- Sabrina Carpenter at the Met gala in 2025
What exactly do the co-chairs and host committee do? Very little. If anything, this list of names is merely a teaser of the who’s who of who’s coming. Vogue is notoriously secretive about the complete guest list, which usually includes well over a hundred A-list celebrities from fashion, film, TV, music, and sports. Even people working the event, even those responsible for producing the red carpet show itself, are not privy to the list. Ever. And I say this as someone who scripted the show for two years. The only people who actually know who is going to show up are Anna Wintour and Sergio Kletnoy, and they keep that list so close to their chests it is practically fused to their skin.
Of course, despite being the biggest fashion-meets-celebrity event of the year, the Met Gala is ultimately a fundraiser for the Costume Institute and the gala and its “dress code” are always closely tied that year’s marquee Costume Institute exhibition. This year’s exhibition is titled “Costume Art” and seeks to present fashion as a through-line in the entire history of art.
The exhibit will be the biggest, in terms of objects, that the institute’s ever done: nearly 400 in total — 200 garments and 200 artworks from around the museum, placed in pairs. “It’s a beast,” said Bolton.
A very chic beast, though, to be sure.
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