Vogue Magazine have released new details for the much anticipated Met Gala, which, as is tradition, will take place on the first Monday in May – this year that falls on the first on the month.
While the full guestlist will only be revealed on the night, we now know the group of A-listers who will be co-hosting the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute fundraiser alongside Anna Wintour, it’s chair since 1995.
The selection, made to best reflect the zeitgeist today, includes pop star Dua Lipa, actresses Michaela Coel and Penélope Cruz, and recently retired tennis player Roger Federer.
This sporting-meets-Hollywood mix is the Met Gala’s USP – Wintour’s penchant for tennis is also well known, and players including Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka have hosted in previous years.
Fashion’s biggest night out coincides with a new exhibition, which helps inform the dress code on the evening. 2023’s is set to be ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’, a retrospective on the legendary former Chanel and Fendi creative director who died aged 85 in 2019. Yesterday afternoon it was announced invitees have been asked to dress “In honor of Karl.”
This leaves guests plenty of options. The late great designer lead the Chanel house since 1983, which opens up an endless archive of iconic looks. He was, as Alicia Drake writes in her best-selling autobiographyThe Beautiful Fall: Lagerfeld, Saint Laurent, and Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris, in “perfect sync with the feelings of the time, and that is what Karl Lagerfeld did and still does with unabashed brilliance. He did not want to be tied down to a look, a style or an identity.”
From Space Age creations to supermarket-chic, the collections span decades. Guests could also look to imbue the man himself. His personal image became of utmost importance: from his iconic ponytail, fingerless leather gloves, and – as Drake recounts – “the impenetrable sunglasses [which] arrived and, from the late 1970s onwards, combined with the increasingly sliced-tongue treatment of others.”
Any then there is Choupette, Lagerfeld’s cherished Birman cat, to whom any nods to will be appreciated. Might she even attend herself?
