The Met Gala is a star-studded event that raises money for the Met’s Costume Institute. The party has a guest list of 400 people, which is a collection of luminaries that arguably makes for the highest celebrity wattage-per-square-foot of any party in the world.
The theme of this year’s Met Gala is “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” and the dress code is “The Garden of Time.”
If you are not famous or powerful, you cannot buy a ticket to the Met Gala. However, you can watch the whole carpet unfold on a Vogue livestream. If you are in New York, you can also join fans across the street, behind barricades, on Fifth Avenue or even further east on Madison.
Entering the museum, guests walk past what is usually an impossibly enormous flower arrangement in the lobby, with perhaps an orchestra playing nearby, and over to cocktails. Or, they head to view the exhibit. Cocktails are about 6 pm to 8 pm, followed by dinner, but the most famous — or those who plan to make the biggest entrance — sometimes come (fashionably) later.
