Why do people care so much about the Met Gala? 

Designer Prabal Gurung says he used 100,000 hand-beaded pearls to detail Alia Bhatt's gown, as an ode to one-time Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld.

It’s the first Monday of May in the Western hemisphere, which means it’s time for the Met Gala. Another round of red carpet looks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, another day of incessant social media chatter all over the world, pondering those looks and wondering what their wearers were thinking. It’s become the sort of unexpected summer ritual some of us never thought would become, well, a ritual.

And yet here we are. Ever since the Met Gala’s theme for 2023 was announced—“Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty”—the Internet has been in hand-wringing mode. A section has been breathless with anticipation to see how their favourite celebrities have interpreted Vogue chief and Met Gala co-chair Anna Wintour’s dress code commandment, “in honour of Karl”.

Isha Ambani

The rest have fumed at the choice of a theme: Karl Lagerfeld, world-famous fashion designer best known for his work at Chanel, was also infamous for his always controversial but now truly out-of-vogue comments about body shapes, the #metoo movement, sweatpants (“a sign of defeat”)—and general misogyny, homophobia, racism, Islamophobia as well.

But the question is: When did we on the other side of the world start caring about the Met Gala to make such a hue and cry about which dead fashion designer they’ve chosen to celebrate? The answer is, for all fact-based purposes, as recent as 2017, but in spirit, it might have to do with its inception in 1948, fuelled by one woman’s conviction that fashion is indeed art.

In post-World War II America, lived a woman called Eleanor Lambert—a publicist who was among the leadership of the American Costume Institute when it became part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lambert was known to be a woman with a vast social network, whimsical ideas and was a strong advocate of fashion’s place in the high arts. She organized the first Met Gala as a fundraiser for the institute—a midnight dinner, with the theme “Aims of the Museum”, where guests were encouraged to wear “costumes and accessories in harmony with their own interpretation of the subject”. Fifty guests turned up, and they each paid $50 to attend.

Also read: Met Gala 2023: A ticket to fashion's biggest night costs Rs 40 lakh. A table costs...

By the 1970s, the event had moved to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the tradition of having a fashion magazine editor in charge began with the appointment of Diana Vreeland. Having worked at Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, and now as the new director of the Costume Institute, she brought Hollywood into the frame. She is believed to have brought in Jackie Kennedy to host one Met Gala, when the theme was “glory of the Russian costume”.

There was a bit of lull after Vreeland’s death in 1989, but her shoes were soon filled by Anna Wintour, who became co-chair of the Met Gala in 1995. Wintour, the omnipotent editor of Vogue and now chief global officer at Conde Nast, fused Lambert’s vision of exclusivity and high fashion with Vreeland’s emphasis on celebrity and visibility. Thus was born “The List”, which is code for the exclusive, heavily curated list of cultural provocateurs who are invited to the Met Gala each year.

Naturally there are some names that have stuck on the list, but over the years, it has also become a reflection of which way the breeze has blown in the tempestuous worlds of music, art, film, and fashion. Most of all, perhaps, the list stays a secret, which has now added an element of intrigue—late into the night, the internet was holding its breath to see if ’90s South Asian supermodel Yasmine Ghauri might finally make a public appearance after decades.

Indian celebs at the Met Gala

India began to really pay attention in 2017—beyond the collection of fashion rags that had always reported on it with a great degree of seriousness. When Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone and Isha Ambani turned up on the red carpet that year, the Met Gala piqued the curiosity of the masses in the Subcontinent for the first time.

The theme in 2017—“Rei Kawakubo/ Commes does Garçons: Art of the In-Between”—leaned on the purist fashion side. It celebrated the designer’s ability to challenge traditional notions of beauty and fashion. The list reflected the diversity at the heart of Kawakubo’s life philosophy, as did the unconventional fashion choices.

Earlier successful Met Gala themes, “Haute Couture” in 1995, “Rock Style” in 1999, “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy” in 2008, “Punk: Chaos to Couture” in 2013 and “China: Through the Looking Glass” in 2015, all demonstrate what Wintour and team had been trying to do: Keeping the focus on fashion, but without losing sight of its place in the larger cultural or political landscape by picking up astoundingly timely threads of thought.

Indeed, it might be the Met Gala’s 2019 edition, with the theme of “Camp: Notes on Fashion”, that cemented the Met Gala’s place in pop culture reckoning. Deriving from the celebrated photographer Susan Sontag’s essay, this Met Gala was a serious consideration of the idea of “camp”, a deliberately over-the-top, ironic or exaggerated style, characterized by its love of kitsch, theatricality and playfulness. In the 20th century, camp came to be associated majorly with the LGBTQ+ community.

Lady Gaga changed four outfits on the red carpet, including a hot pink Brandon Maxwell dress in an oversized bow, a black ball gown with a 25-foot train, which she revealed on the red carpet with a troupe of backup dancers. Actor and singer Billy Porter came through hoisted on a litter by six shirtless men, wearing a gold-winged ensemble that was inspired by the ancient Egyptian sun god.

Priyanka Chopra’s Dior ensemble—a sheer silver gown with a thigh-high slit, paired with a cape that had a feathered collar and sleeves, along with a silver crown—was said to be designed to resemble the bindi.

Businesswoman and philanthropist Natasha Poonawalla wore an icy blue gown by Peter Dundas; Isha Ambani wore a lavender gown by designer Prabal Gurung, and Padukone appeared in a metallic pink gown designed by Zac Posen. They may not have been the most over-the-top outfits on the red carpet that year—which was the ask—but they’d made sure of one thing. We were watching.

Of course, all of this became a phenomenon when Instagram and social media itself was becoming more image-oriented; and a new guard of fashion watchers was emerging that existed and spoke to audiences far outside the tall, heavily-guarded gates of high fashion.

Met Gala 2023

All eyes have been on the 2023 Met Gala red carpet since an unholy 4 am, with industry watchers and news media channels in punctual attendance via their smartphone screens, offering “LIVE updates”. It’s a sea of black, white, silver and enamel shades this year. Alia Bhatt made her Met Gala debut this morning in an elegant, understated Prabal Gurung embroidery-and-pearls gown: the photos are already viral.

Doja Cat turned up as Karl Lagerfeld’s cat Choupette. (Image: AFP)

On social media channels, it’s a veritable viewing party complete with hot takes and hot gossip, as the public sits on the sidelines and applauds or shakes their head at the best that the celebrities and their stylists can come up with. The kvetching about Karl Lagerfeld as an inspiration has been set aside for now. Diet Prada, instead, “lost it” when Jared Leto and Doja Cat turned up as Karl Lagerfeld’s cat Choupette.

But the real cat calls are coming from Diet Sabya’s account. Grace Elizabeth looks like cassata ice-cream. The “Uorfication” of Amanda Seyfried has begun. They love Michaela Cole’s “diamond bush” in an iconic look that is “giving Sabyasachi on acid”. Lil Nas X’s metallic body paint is reminding people of “West Delhi holi”.

It goes on, this part-roast, part-assessment of a night when fashion meets the world in its most outrageous form. Met Gala, more than anything else, has succeeded in making fashion a key part of cultural conversation. The only limits are the ones that exist in their imagination: which makes the Met Gala a true test of the ability of the world’s most prominent and most famous to provoke and respond.