ENTERTAINMENT

SOME OF OUR FAVOURITE 2021 MET GALA LOOKS

By Namwaka Mwakamui | 15th September 2021

The Met Gala is the biggest night of the year in the fashion world. Due to the pandemic, last year’s event was cancelled, meaning this years Met Gala will be the first to take place since 2019. The event is held to celebrate and fundraise for the new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of art’s Costume Institute, the Met Gala is typically themed around the artwork set to go on display. It brought out emerging talent in both entertainment and fashion for the first Met Ball since May 2019. The new guard, led by the likes of Billie Eilish and Naomi Osaka stole the show.

It is the first Met Gala since May 2019, and what a different world it is. Reporters are masked and the approved number of outlets shrunk, it is still shoulder to shoulder and celebrities still do the same dance between flashing cameras, screaming fans across the street.

Like always, the star-studded guest list are dressed by designers, who have interpreted a certain theme, with the theme this yaer being “In America: The lexicon of fashion”. Talking of the theme, Andrew Bolton, the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute, believes “American fashion is undergoing a renaissance” due to social justice and political movements of recent years, making it the right “time to reexamine American identity and fashion” now.

The party of the year began as an annual fundraiser for the Costume Institute and didn’t even take place in the Metropolitan Museum. The first event was organized by fashion publicist and CFDA founder Eleanor Lambert in 1948, two years after the Costume Institute became part of the Met. The December midnight suppers were held at venues such as the Waldorf Astoria, Central Park, and Rainbow Room until 1971.

The Costume Institute at the Met has been in existence in one shape or another since 1959. But it took the arrival of the legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland, as a special consultant in 1973, to bring it into the spotlight. Word has it that after Vreeland was unceremoniously fired from her pinnacle position as the editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine at the age of 69, Jacqueline Kennedy quietly campaigned for (and funded) a position for her at the Met.