The 2024 Met Gala is just around the corner, with the ‘Oscars of the fashion world’ taking place in New York early May. What to know ahead of the red carpet and party? Here’s your fashion nerd history lesson.

As always, we’ll be bringing you the best of the red carpet - and the after-parties (revisit last year’s best-dressed here, and the after-party action here).

I've been living under a rock: what is it?

The Met Gala is the biggest fashion event of the year – essentially an annual party and fundraiser at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts in New York to mark the opening of the Costume Institute’s hero exhibition.

The first gala was held in 1948 and typically hosted wealthy New York society. In 1973, legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland took over at the Costume Institute and revamped the gala to invite celebrities and introduce yearly themes. Since 1995 Vogue editor Anna Wintour has been chairwoman of the event, with huge power over its invite list and themes.

Funds from the gala itself goes towards the upkeep and work of the Costume Institute – including preserving precious garments and pieces of history. Last year’s event raised almost $22 million, according to Vogue.

Organised by Wintour and the Costume Institute, the Gala is also a huge generator of content, for Vogue, who runs it, and every other lifestyle focused platform (hence why we, here in NZ, are doing this story!).

This year’s Met Gala is in aid of the exhibition Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, which will showcase a range of archival pieces from the museum’s archives – some have said this is a reaction to Kim Kardashian’s wearing and possible destroying of Marilyn Monroe’s gown to the 2022 event, and questioned whether precious pieces of history should be worn. Some of the garments that will be shown in the exhibition are so fragile that they can’t be hung upright, and will lie protected in glass cases – like Sleeping Beauty.

When is it?

Always held on the first Monday in May in New York (except for postponements during the pandemic), this year’s Met Gala is on May 6 – which is technically the first Tuesday in May here for us in NZ. Red carpet arrivals generally kick off mid-morning around 10am NZT.

Who’ll be there?

Anna Wintour will definitely be there – it’s her party after all – and this year she’ll be joined at the top of the stairs by quite a random assortment of co-chairs: Bad Bunny, Chris Hemsworth, Jennifer Lopez and Zendaya.

The guest list is a closely guarded secret that only Wintour and her underlings know, but generally you’ll see Met Gala regulars like Rihanna, Blake Lively, the Kardashians and Katy Perry, and others who use it as an opportunity for visibility during promotion for a new album or film – think Dua Lipa, Lady Gaga (The Joker trailer just dropped), Billie Eilish, Charli XCX, Anya Taylor-Joy. We bet we’ll also see new Met Gala attendees like Lily Gladstone, Ayo Edebiri, Coco Gauff and WNBA #1 draft pick Caitlin Clark.

Couples we’d put money on seeing grace the Met Gala red carpet for their photo moment: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, Reneé Rapp and Towa Bird, Vogue favourites Gigi Hadid and Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Allen White and Rosalía, Barry Keoghan and Sabrina Carpenter. If they haven’t broken up, Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet will probably turn up together, too. And remember how actor Taylor Russell charmed Wintour at the Loewe show in September, with her metal coat? That probably won her a Met Gala invite, possibly with beau Harry Styles in tow.

TikTok is this year’s main sponsor, so expect lots of TikTokers (we’d love to see fashion critic Mandy Lee and Campbell Puckett, known as Pookie, there). Luxury brand Loewe is a ‘support’ sponsor, which means they will dress the most stars - expect brand (and fashion) favourites like Greta Lee, Josh O’Connor and (hopefully but unlikely) Loewe campaign star Maggie Smith.

‍What will they wear?

The dress code for each Met Gala draws on the exhibition, with this year’s guests told to dress to the theme of ‘The Garden of Time’, inspired by J.G. Ballard's 1962 short story. We expect to see lots of literal interpretations of the sleeping beauty theme, as well as plenty of creative takes on flowers – but can’t wait to see the unexpected and surprising translations.

Doesn’t it all feel a bit… yuck?

…well, yes. Last year there was some online commentary likening the parade of celebrities in costumes as being something like The Hunger Games’ Capitol tribute parades – and that wasn’t in a year where the world was dealing with genocide, recession, a collapsing fourth estate and another possible presidential term from Trump. Hopefully some use their Met Gala moment to make comment on the political climate (and more than just wearing an ‘artists for ceasefire’ pin, though that is a first step).

It is a bit icky but it’s important to remember that the gala is in itself a huge fundraiser for the Costume Institute, the fashion and design arm of the Metropolitan Museum – and the arts are important and worthy of financial support.

I’m a fashion nerd. Tell me more about the actual exhibition that this gala officially opens.

Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion will feature around 250 garments spanning four centuries from the Met’s archives, ‘visually united by iconography related to nature’ – “a metaphor for the fragility and ephemerality of fashion and a vehicle to examine the cyclical themes of rebirth and renewal”.

The exhibition will feature galleries themed around earth, air and water, with displays created to engage visitors’ sense of sight, smell, touch and hearing. There will be a gallery arranged as a garden, with hats ‘blooming with a variety of flowers’ and a coat by Loewe’s Jonathan Anderson, “planted with oat, rye, and wheat grass that will start out alive and gradually die during the exhibition”.

Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute and the key person behind this exhibition, explained that “When an item of clothing enters our collection, its status is changed irrevocably. What was once a vital part of a person’s lived experience is now a motionless ‘artwork’ that can no longer be worn or heard, touched, or smelled.

“The exhibition endeavours to animate these artworks by re-awakening their sensory capacities through a range of technologies, affording visitors sensorial ‘access’ to rare historical garments and rarefied contemporary fashions.”

He told AP that he thinks nature is a broader metaphor for fashion: “the fragility and ephemerality of fashion, but also the circular nature of fashion, the ideas of regeneration and rebirth. So the through-line is the natural world.”

Remind me what happened last year?

Gladly! Last year’s Gala honoured the late designer Karl Lagerfeld, with some literal odes to the longtime Chanel creative director – lots of black and white, tuxedo dressing, pearls and gloves. Rihanna and A$AP Rocky arrived late, walking the red carpet which had been empty for about an hour – RiRi’s Valentino flowers were one of the best of the evening, of course. Karlie Kloss and Serena Williams announced their pregnancies on the white carpet. Dua Lipa wore a piece of fashion history, in a Chanel couture dress from 1992, while Jared Leto dressed up as Karl’s cat Choupette (Doja Cat’s Oscar de la Renta gown with cat-eared hood was a much better interpretation). It was all a bit boring, if we’re honest – we’re excited to see a broader theme this year, and much more creativity (and colour). If you’re a visual learner, revisit our best-dressed here and looks from the after-parties here.