The Met Gala and its themes in recent years

AdminJanuary 19, 2023

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Although this is not a retrospective, On this occasion, the idea is to discuss the sketches of the Kaiser of fashion with the finished creations of the five houses that span his career, from Balmain, Patou, Chloé, Fendi, and Chanel.

2022 Winnie Harlow (Evan Agostini). /Invision/AP

But why is the central theme of the Met Gala a trend on the internet every year? Perhaps because it is not only one of the events that brings together the biggest celebrities of the year, it is also the biggest presentation of art in fashion.

Since 1995, the year in which Anna Wintour became the president of the event, it has covered everything from supernatural beliefs, superheroes and designer retrospectives, such as in 2012 with the “Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations”; in 2008, the “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy”; or in 2005 with “The House of Chanel”. Presentations, designs, concepts, winks and themes that not only establish a discourse from the aesthetic style but also from the social, cultural and even ideological areas that the same aesthetic dominates in the societies of the planet.

2022 Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds ANGELA WEISS / AFP

Below we review the concepts that have defined the Met Gala in recent years.

2016

The “Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology” It was a trip to the future in a looks supported by the most avant-garde technology.

We talk about designs with built-in light or garments made from recycled plastic. According to the same Vogue magazine, this year the concept was used to explore the contrast between handmade fashion with the intervention of machinery.

2016 Sarah Jessica Parker Charles Sykes/Invision/AP

2017

Oriente was presented on the catwalk of the Met Gala with a tribute to the Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo.

For example, Rihanna and Caroline Kennedywore original pieces, while others referred her through other designers, while Katy Perry and Pharrell Williams presided over the night of the “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between”.

2017 Janelle Monae Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

2018

The “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” featured a theme of sacred items: artifacts and objects sent directly from the Vatican.

2019

The theme of that one built on Susan Sontag’s seminal 1964 essay “Notes on Camp” (“Camp: Notes on Fashion”).

The text analyzed the different ways of interpretation of the camp concept. While the exhibition was sponsored by Gucci and, of course, co-hosted by Lady Gaga, Alessandro Michele, Harry Styles, Serena Williams, and Anna Wintour.

2019 Tommy Hilfiger and Dee Hilfiger Neilson Barnard/Getty Images/AFP

2020

The year of the pandemic, the gala was postponed indefinitely. Its theme, however, warrants revision: In honor of the Met’s 150th anniversary, About Time took a look back at a century and a half of fashion.

The inspiration came from Orlando, 1992 film based on the homonymous novel by English writer Virginia Woolf.

2021

They say that to choose the theme That year, the curator and head of the Costume Institute, Andrew Bolton, wondered what it is and how do you manage to be an American?

at the gala In America: A Lexicon of Fashion, Bolton sought to explain the question that arises from a red, white and blue silk sash that was part of Prabal Gurung’s tenth-anniversary collection, which evoked a review of the design and profile of young American designers.

The result? An exhibition with more than 100 pieces by American designers.

2022

The analysis of the American in fashion, established at the 2021 gala, continued with a second part this year with the theme: “In America: An Anthology of Fashion”

While in 2021 a review of American fashion was made as a whole; Anthology presented a historical retrospective of both designs and stories of its creators. These stories sought to expose the evolution of the American style, as well as recognition of the individual work of tailors, dressmakers and designers.