25 Years of Met Gala Themes: A Look Back at Many First Mondays in May

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s Met gala will not take place on the first Monday in May. But while there will be no red (or, in last year’s case, pink) carpet sprawling up the steps this spring, the show will go on: the 2020 Costume Institute exhibit, “About Time: Fashion and Duration,” will open this October.

The gala is, yes, a major star-studded fundraising event, but its importance goes beyond dollars raised and social media impressions made. It’s a grand display of art as fashion and fashion as art, showing how both forms comprise and define our cultural fabric. Each theme is chosen with the utmost consideration—what story does this tell? What history does it teach? In 2018, “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” showcased hundreds of holy items from the Vatican. A few years earlier, “China: Through the Looking Glass” celebrated China’s influence on Western and Eastern design. Last May explored “Camp” and its exaggerated artifice.

Below, we’ve charted out all the themes dating back to 1995, the first year Anna Wintour became a chair of the event. Take a virtual look back at fashion’s biggest night.

2020: “About Time: Fashion and Duration”

This year’s gala is postponed indefinitely, but who says you can’t brush up on the theme early? In honor of the Met’s 150th anniversary, “About Time” will take a look back at a century-and-a-half’s worth of fashion. But its progression won’t be linear: “It’s a reimagining of fashion history that’s fragmented, discontinuous, and heterogeneous,” says Andrew Bolton, Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute. He found inspiration in Orlando, the 1992 film based on the Virginia Woolf novel of the same name. “What I like about Woolf’s version of time is the idea of a continuum,” Bolton says. “There’s no beginning, middle, or end. It’s one big fat middle. I always felt the same about fashion. Fashion is the present.”

2019: “Camp: Notes on Fashion”

For last year’s exhibition, Bolton drew on Susan Sontag’s seminal 1964 essay, “Notes on ‘Camp’.” The essay describes a sensibility marked by performance, excess, and a kind of winking bad taste exemplified by figures like Oscar Wilde and outré aesthetic movements such as Art Nouveau. Among the pieces on display were dazzling looks from Off-White, Schiaparelli, Moschino, Dior, Thom Browne, and lots more.

Met Gala 2019 Red Carpet: See All the Celebrity Dresses, Outfits, and Looks Here

2018: “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”

2018’s divine theme had hundreds of holy items on display, including dozens of artifacts and objects sent over from the Vatican (most of which had never seen the light beyond Rome). Guests rose to the occasion at the annual gala, with Rihanna dressing as the pope and Katy Perry as an angel (wings and all).

Met Gala 2018 Red Carpet: All the Celebrity Dresses and Fashion

2017: “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between”

The Met gala toasted the legendary Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo and featured her “objects,” as she liked to call them. Some guests, like Rihanna and Caroline Kennedy, stuck to the theme and sported original pieces, while others interpreted the topic through other designers. The event was co-chaired by Katy Perry and Pharrell Williams.

Met Gala 2017 Red Carpet Live: All the Celebrity Dresses and Fashion

2016: “Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology”

The exclusive event went back to the future with tech at the forefront. Stars like Claire Danes literally lit up the ball in a glowing gown, while Emma Watson wore a five-piece Calvin Klein Collection set, which was made from recycled plastic bottles. The exhibition itself focused on the dichotomy between handmade and machine-made fashion, displaying more than 100 pieces of haute couture and ready-to-wear.

Met Gala 2016: Fashion—Live From the Red Carpet