Fashion’s Biggest Night’s Theme Has Been Announced

A 19th Century Ballgown that will be on display at the Costume Institute's newest exhibit. Credit: Angela Weiss via Agence France-Presse

The 2024 Met Gala theme, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” was announced on Nov. 8, and the fashion world is already stirring with predictions, takes, and potential interpretations.

The Met Gala is an annual fundraising event held for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute that occurs on the first Monday of May, when the annual Costume Institute exhibition debuts. The two events share the same theme, with the gala acting as a celebration of the exhibition, ushering it in with an invite list filled with Hollywood’s high life: actors and actresses, musicians, artists, politicians, socialites, and social media influencers all participating in the world’s most expensive costume party. It has become a night where haute couture fashion is the expected dress code, creating an anticipation to see how extravagantly creative and beautiful the outfits will be. 

This year’s theme invites three particular interpretations to be taken: Princesses, Springtime, and Historically Hidden Gems. 

A theme entitled ‘Sleeping Beauties’ will have invitees looking to princesses for inspiration. A specific collection that comes to mind is Christian Dior’s Haute Couture line for the Fall/Winter 2007/2008 season, complete with ballgowns and tiaras in true rococo style: monochrome bouffant gowns with puffed sleeves, skirts, and veils that come in dramatic pinks, oranges, and blues. This collection takes clear inspiration from royal ball wear, has pieces featured in this year’s exhibit, and will hopefully be seen on the event’s red carpet.

Alternatively, taking the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ theme to its most literal interpretation, Viktor & Rolf’s Ready-to-Wear collection for the 2005 Fall/Winter season would be a fun archive to pull from. The bedtime story collection features pieces like a duvet ball gown, where the coat is styled like a bed comforter, and the headpiece is styled as two pillows where the model’s head is ‘rested.’ A literal walking ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ this look was a staple piece of the collection and could be a staple piece of the gala.

Andrew Bolton, the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute, offered a clue into the theming of the exhibit, saying that it will have three main “zones:” land, sea, and sky, indicating the exhibit’s focus on nature and the natural world. Observing the second half of the theme – ‘Reawakening Fashion’ – offers the impressions of rebirth and blooming into life, fitting since the Met Gala is held in the middle of spring. Because of this, it would be appropriate to see invitees dressed in nature-inspired garmentry.

Keeping with the couture traditions of the Met, the flower-coffin dress from Guo Pei’s Haute Couture collection from the Fall/Winter 2019/2020 season is an example of a potential nature-inspired piece that may end up on the red carpet, as the look buries the model in a bed of flowers acting as a natural sarcophagus.

Another potential interpretation of this ‘nature’ category may involve tie-ins with the overarching Sleeping Beauty theme with animal-inspired clothing, particularly garments inspired by birds. Alexander McQueen’s final look in his Ready-to-Wear collection for the Fall/Winter 2009 season was made to transform the model into a raven-like humanoid, with the piece being made entirely of duck feathers that were dyed black complete with a headpiece that covers the majority of the head, leaving a heart-shaped opening for the model’s face to pop out. The raven reference matches the more nature-centric interpretation of the theme while also alluding to the story of Sleeping Beauty, as Maleficent, the villain in the story, is accompanied by a raven.

Finally, the theme encourages invitees to search for garmentry that represents the vast and expansive history of luxury fashion houses, maybe even pulling archival pieces from their earliest collections. ‘Sleeping Beauty: Reawakening Fashion’ is, at its core, a celebration of the history of fashion, which poses good news for the invitees who may not have the social status or the resources to pull from haute couture collections.