The Met Gala is widely considered one of the most important nights in fashion, and it is here.
Celebrities from all corners of entertainment will flock to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City on Monday, dressed in jaw-dropping outfits from the industry’s top designers.
Prada, Gucci, and Chanel, oh my.
Each year, event organizers give the gala a theme to inspire attendees’ looks. This year’s theme was coined “In America: An Anthology of Fashion,” the finale of a two-part exhibit that explores sartorial narratives in American fashion. The 2021 theme was titled “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.”
“Part Two, which explores the foundations of American fashion in relation to the complex histories of the American Wing period rooms, serves as a preface to the concise dictionary of American fashion presented in Part One,” Andrew Bolton, the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute, said in a release.
Bolton said that while Lexicon explored a new language of American fashion, Anthology uncovers unfamiliar sartorial narratives filtered through the imaginations of some of America’s most visionary film directors.
Here’s a look at the themes from the star-studded Met Galas of the last decade:
2021: “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion”
2020: “About Time: Fashion and Duration”
The 2020 Met Gala was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the theme, “About Time: Fashion and Duration,” celebrated the event’s 150th anniversary and highlighted fashion throughout a century and a half.
2019: “Camp: Notes on Fashion”
2018: “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”
2017: “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between”
2016: “Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology”
2015: “China: Through the Looking Glass”
2014: “Charles James: Beyond Fashion”
2013: “Punk: Chaos to Couture”
2012: “Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations”