Met Gala 2018: Everything You Need To Know

The Costume Institute Gala at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is the biggest event on the fashion fundraising calendar. Founded by publicist Eleanor Lambert, the benefit was first held in 1948 to encourage donations from New York's high society. In its modern incarnation, the most famous faces from the realms of fashion, film, music and art come together to raise money for the Met's Costume Institute and celebrate the grand opening of its latest exhibition. The night is centred on the theme of the new exhibition, with previous themes encompassing everything from Manus x Machina and Punk: Chaos to Couture to China: Through the Looking Glass. This year's exhibition theme is Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.

Since 1995, the event has been chaired by US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who enlists public figures to serve as the event's co-chairs. Past hosts have included Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Marc Jacobs. The Met Gala 2018, which marks the event's 70th anniversary, will be co-chaired by Amal Clooney, Rihanna and Donatella Versace. From the number of guests to the price of a ticket.

When will the Met Gala 2018 take place?

The Met Gala takes place on the first Monday of May, which this year falls on May 7th. Red carpet coverage will begin from around 7pm local time. Viewers in the UK can follow Vogue's coverage from 1am GMT.

Where will the Met Gala 2018 take place?

The Met Gala takes place in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The night begins with a cocktail hour, in which guests walk the red carpet and explore the new exhibition, before sitting down to dinner in the Temple of Dendur, in the museum's Sackler Wing. This year's exhibition will be spread across three venues: the Anna Wintour Costume Center, the medieval galleries at the Met’s main location, and at the Cloisters, further uptown.

What is the Met Gala 2018 theme?

Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination will feature some 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 left the Vatican's possession before. 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, who is a sponsor of the exhibition.

Unpicking The 2018 Met Gala Dress Code

The Met Gala 2018 theme is being cited as the Met's most controversial yet, owing to the positioning of these fashion garments alongside sacred artefacts. Bolton, however, has defended his curation: "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," he said at a press conference in Rome. "It affirms religious allegiances and, by extension, it asserts religious differences."

"Fashion reflects the world around us and nobody understands that more clearly than Andrew," Wintour, museum trustee and Met Gala 2018 co-chair, told the press. "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."

How the famous faces of the fashion world will negotiate religious iconography into red-carpet wear is a feat the world is waiting to see.

How can I watch the Met Gala in the UK?

E! will broadcast the event live from the red carpet, starting from 12.30am GMT.