Yahoo News Everything we know about the 2020 Met Gala
The 2020 Met Gala has been postponed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Anna Wintour, who chairs the event, confirmed that the annual celebration of fashion will no longer take place on the first Monday of May this year - which is when it traditionally takes place.
"One day that will not arrive on schedule will be the opening of the Costume Institute’s exhibition, ‘About Time'," she wrote in a piece on Vogue.com. "Due to the unavoidable and responsible decision by the Metropolitan Museum to close its doors, ‘About Time,’ and the opening night gala, will be postponed to a later date.”
Wintour didn't confirm when the event might be rescheduled for, but it will undoubtedly be tough to find a date that fits with the busy schedules of all the invite-only celebrity guests and designers, who each pay $35,000 per ticket. As the event provides the funding for the Costume Institute for the rest of the year, it seems probable that the organisers would need to try and find an alternative date in the autumn.
Concerns about the coronavirus pandemic have also forced three of the Met's venues to close temporarily; all three Met locations (the Met Fifth Avenue, the Met Breuer, and the Met Cloisters) were shut on 13 March until April - for now - in order to support New York City's effort to contain the spread of Covid-19.
Before the event's cancellation was confirmed, a number of key figures involved, including Anna Wintour, Andrew Bolton and Nicholas Ghesquière, gathered in Paris in February for a press preview to announce more about the forthcoming exhibition and accompanying gala.
In November, Bolton, the curator in charge of the Costume Institute at the museum, announced that next year's spring exhibition and gala (otherwise known as the biggest night on the fashion calendar), will be themed as 'About Time: Fashion and Duration'.
The exhibition will trace a century and a half of fashion, from 1870 to present day, also marking the timeline of the Met, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.
It has also been revealed that the exhibition will employ philosopher Henri Bergson’s concept of "la durée" (the continuity of time), exploring how clothes generate temporal associations that conflate the past, present, and future. The concept will also be examined through the writings of Virginia Woolf.
"Fashion is indelibly connected to time," Bolton said. "It not only reflects and represents the spirit of the times, but it also changes and develops with the times, serving as an especially sensitive and accurate timepiece. Through a series of chronologies, the exhibition will use the concept of duration to analyse the temporal twists and turns of fashion history."
The show will be chaired by Nicolas Ghesquière of Louis Vuitton, Emma Stone, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Anna Wintour, and Meryl Streep, who will be attending her first ever Met Gala.
How guests will choose to tackle the dress code remains to be seen, but this appears to be one of the most open-ended themes for the red carpet we have had in a while – attendees could choose to go very literal, channel the vintage movement or opt to simply wear something timeless.
See highlights from last year's Met Gala, which was themed around Camp, below.
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