Stars like Kim Kardashian, Blake Lively, Alicia Keys, Jared Leto, Billie Eilish and Sarah Jessica Parker once again walked the red carpet on the steps of the Museum in Central Park in Manhattan – cheered by numerous fans who, in rainy weather, sometimes waited for hours before the Museum had endured. Once again, there were sweeping robes, endless trains and provocative statement pieces to marvel at.
In addition to classic and timeless costumes, crazy and garish ones could be seen on the red carpet. Kim Kardashian provided the highlight of this year’s gala with Marilyn Monroe’s original outfit. She wore the sparkling beige dress when she sang a birthday song to then-US President John F. Kennedy in 1962, Kardashian says.
Reference to heyday of the US economy
This year, the Met Ball, often referred to as the “Party of the Year”, had the motto “Gilded Glamour”, a reference to an economic heyday in the USA at the end of the 19th century. “I’m so proud of all her outfits and we all got ready together,” said Kris Jenner. The gala is a “fantastic meeting of people from culture who celebrate New York, the Met and fashion,” said the Austrian museum director Max Hollein.
Fundraising event as “Party of the Year”
The gala is an annual fundraising event for the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute. The annual budget of the institute, which is now named after Vogue boss Anna Wintour, is estimated at several million dollars from the “Costume Institute Benefit”.
Because of the pandemic, the gala, which traditionally takes place on the first Monday in May, had to be canceled twice in a row and was finally made up for in September 2021 – for the opening of the fashion exhibition “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion”. The gala on Monday opened the second part of the exhibition – “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” about the history of American fashion. First Lady Jill Biden also watched the show in the morning. Fashion icon Wintour said it was one of the “most exquisite exhibitions” curator Andrew Bolton has ever worked on.
Musk: “Make Twitter as inclusive as possible”
The problems of the world were largely left out on this gala evening. Only briefly during the live stream from the red carpet was a call for donations for Ukraine in the war against Russia. With tech billionaire Elon Musk, who is currently trying to take over the short message service Twitter and who had come with his mother Maye, the complexities of the world arrived at the gala.
Musk has previously explained his takeover plans by saying that the platform restricts free speech and that he wants to change that – and now said: “If everything goes as planned, my goal is to make Twitter as inclusive as possible and to have it used by as wide a part of the country and world as possible; and that they find it interesting and entertaining and that it makes the world a better place.”