It’s the first Monday of May: Welcome to Met Gala mania.
With a live stream available throughout the evening, the world’s most fashionable fundraiser takes on one of the world’s most prolific – and controversial – designers, the late karl lagerfeldAs a starry party theme.
So how would the man of this time, who died in 2019, feel about all the clamor? Lagerfeld was certainly a student of history, but he always had his eyes set on the future. “Karl never wanted a retrospective when he was alive. He felt it was funerary. He said (Cristobal) Balenciaga and (Coco) Chanel never had these when they were alive,” said William Middleton. who wrote biography Paradise Now: The Extraordinary Life of Karl Lagerfeld,
So what now? “He believed very much in fashion history, so he is now part of fashion history. I don’t think he would have had a problem with that,” Middleton speculated. Others are not so sure.
Caroline Leber worked with Lagerfeld for 35 years, rising to the position of Senior Vice President of Image and Communications for his namesake brand. Lagerfeld loved Mate, but he always said: “I’m not an artist, I’m a fashion maker,” Leber said on the company’s site. “He didn’t think his work belonged in a museum. Even Anna Wintour mentioned it when she made an announcement about the subject,” Leber explained.
The invitation-only gala earned $17.4 million last year for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, a self-funding department whose budget depends on an A-list case. This year the cost of participation rose to $300,000 for a table and $50,000 for a ticket.
Companies and brands buy tables and host many of the nearly 400 guests expected this year from fashion, film, music, theatre, sport, technology and social media. She was asked to dress “in honor of Karl” by Gala mastermind Wintour, a close Lagerfeld friend who first signed on for the event in 1995 and took the helm in 1999.
Fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert conceived the Met Gala in 1948 as a fundraiser for the newly founded Costume Institute. It was a dinner hosted elsewhere. The idea is to celebrate the opening of the institute’s major exhibition every year, this time called “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty”.
American fashion was vibrant last year. Then there’s the gilded glamor and white tie. the theme of the camp was In 2019, the dress is considered by the celebrity crowd to be one of the wackiest displays. Katy Perry wears a chandelier, then dons a hamburger outfit. Lady Gaga did a four-layer strip tease on the Met’s Grand Staircase and Jared Leto did a stage version of his own head.
Dressing according to the Lagerfeld theme can be easy for guests with stylists able to source the best vintage pieces from the fashion houses he worked for: Chanel, Fendi, Chloé, Jean Patou, Balmain, his own brand and much more.
This year’s five hosts include Wintour, as always, Michaela Cole, along with longtime Chanel ambassador Penelope Cruz, recently retired tennis superstars Roger Federer and Dua Lipa.