The Style Section: Met Gala 2024
The Met Gala is held on the first Monday of May, introducing the start of fashion weeks all around the world. Hosted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, the lavish event seeks to fundraise for the Costume Institute, a collective that studies and conserves fashion throughout the ages. The Met Gala is popularly thought of as the world’s most glamorous event where celebrities and popular media and fashion figures gather.
Each year MoMA curator Andrew Bolton and his team chooses a new theme, often working in conjunction with the current exhibitions being shown in the museum. This year, the theme was ‘Gardens of Time’, a nod to MoMA’s main exhibition ‘Sleeping Beauties – Reawakening Fashion’. The event is organized by Vogue, with editor-in-chief Anna Wintour herself choosing the guest list.
Each year, celebrities work with often high fashion brands and designers to come up with a look, correlating with both the theme of the Met Gala and style of the brand and personality. Every year there are high expectations that celebs dress to impress – after all – this is the most watched and criticised event out of the whole fashion calendar.
This year we saw some stunning attire grace the stairs. The internet was engulfed by Mona Patel’s look, referring to her as the ‘Mystery Girl’ as many people did not recognise her. The public has claimed she has ‘won’ the Met Gala this year due to her show-stopping look by Iris Van Herpen. She wore a fitted, sheer floor-length dress, a corset bodice with a beautiful gold and white cinched butterfly giving the illusion of a smaller waist. The soft colours are complimented with lace on the sides of the gown, meeting a high curved slit lined with the continuation of the butterfly. The back is decorated with a device that flutters ten sets of wings across her arms and the long train is layered with single wings outlined with boning to pronounce the shape. She patterned her gown with a low side bun and dashing dangling diamonds.
Other celebrities focussed on the time element of the theme of the exhibition bringing out archival looks. Kendall Jenner wore a Givenchy archival gown by Alexander McQueen from 1999. Known for her fashion statements, Zendaya was first to walk the carpet, wearing a custom Margiela gown by John Galliano who took reference from his 1999 Spring collection at Dior. She walked the stairs a second time to close the carpet wearing a Givenchy gown from the Spring 1996 collection which she matched with a stunning Alexander McQueen flower bouquet headpiece from Spring 2007.
Honourable mentions at this year’s Met Gala: Gigi Hadid in Tom Browne with a classic embroidered look, Alia Bhatt in Sabyasachi with a traditional sari also hand embroidered, Elle Fanning in Balmain with a gorgeous draping fabric with two birds of her shoulders (supposed to depict the scene in Cinderella where Cinderella is being dressed by birds). And lastly, Tyla was dressed by Balmain in a custom body-cast sand gown, decorated with an hourglass to connect it to the time theme. I look forward to next year.
Juliette J, Year 11