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Met Gala 2018: Inside the Biggest Fashion Fundraising Event of the Year

This year, The Costume Institute Gala at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, otherwise known as The Met Gala 2018, is the biggest, most grand event on the fashion fundraising calendar. Founded in 1948 by publicist Eleanor Lambert, the benefit was formed as a way to stimulate donations from New York’s upper crust. The Met Gala is always one for the books, where celebrities in music, fashion, film, and art come together to raise money for the Met’s Costume Institute and rejoice the debut of its latest exhibition. Each year, the night is centered on the theme of the newest exposition, where celebrities display fabulous, often outlandish ensembles. The themes have covered everything from Manus x Machina and Punk: Chaos to Couture to China: Through the Looking Glass; however, this year’s Met Gala theme is one for the books. Marking the event’s 70^th anniversary, the upcoming theme is Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.

Photo via Vogue

Definitely the most controversial theme yet, Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, will present around 40 Vatican-vestments and accessories spanning 15 papacies, which curator Andrew Bolton is said to have visited at least 10 times to secure pieces which have never before left the Vatican’s possession. Influential items Items such as Pope Benedict XV’s white silk cape embroidered with gold thread and the pointed bishop’s hat of Pope Leo XIII, will go on display alongside pieces by Coco Chanel, who was educated by nuns, John Galliano, Cristóbal Balenciaga and Donatella Versace

Photo via Vogue

“Some might consider fashion to be an unfitting or unseemly medium by which to engage with ideas about the sacred or the divine, but dress is central to any discussion about religion. It affirms religious allegiances and, by extension, it asserts religious differences.”
-Andrew Bolton, Curator

Photo via Vogue

Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of US Vogue, has chaired the extravagant fundraiser since 1995. The fashion icon enlists notable co-chairs from Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Marc Jacobs, just to name a few.  Amal Clooney, Rihanna and Donatella Versace are this year’s co-chairs, making the Met Gala 2018 a night to remember. This year’s exhibition will pervade throughout three fabulous venues: the Anna Wintour Costume Center, the medieval galleries at the Met’s main location, and at the Cloisters, further uptown.

Photo by TIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images, via Vogue

“Fashion reflects the world around us, and nobody understands that more clearly than Andrew When I go to these fashion exhibitions. I’m always so amazed to see people from all sides of the globe and all walks of life really studying the exhibitions, understanding that fashion does not operate in a vacuum.”
-Anna Wintour

Photo via Vogue

Mark your calendars on the first Monday of May, which this year falls on May 7. Red carpet coverage will begin from around 7 pm local time! Don’t forget to tune in and experience New York City’s annual Met Gala, evoking creativity, imagination, charitability and fashion, entwined in one monumental event.

Photo via Vogue

For more details about this fashion fabulous event check out Vogue’s article, Met Gala 2018: Everything You Need to Know

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