Met Gala 2019: 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 Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, to Manus x Machina, Punk: Chaos to Couture and China: Through the Looking Glass. This year's exhibition theme is Camp: Notes On Fashion.

Since 1995, the event has been chaired by US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who enlists public figures to serve as her co-chairs. Past hosts have included Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Amal Clooney and Rihanna. The Met Gala 2019, which marks the event's 71th anniversary, will be co-chaired by Lady Gaga, Alessandro Michele, Harry Styles and Serena Williams.

When is the Met Gala 2019?

The Met Gala takes place on the first Monday of May, which this year falls on May 6. Red-carpet coverage normally begins at 7pm local time, when team Vogue will begin reporting on all the outfit details.

Where will the Met Gala 2019 take place?

The Met Gala always 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 and the evening's performances. The odds are on Lady Gaga and Harry Styles, this year's co-chairs, to take to the stage.

What is the Met Gala 2019 theme?

Andrew Bolton, curator of the Costume Institute, has framed the exhibition around Susan Sontag’s seminal 1964 essay Notes on "Camp", which posited different ways in which the concept could be construed. Bolton told Hamish Bowles that he found Sontag’s writings so timely with what is going on culturally and politically that, “[he] felt it would have a lot of cultural resonance.” Read Bowles's full musings on what the Met Gala 2019 theme.

The contents of the exhibition are of course still undisclosed, but Bob Mackie, the long-time collaborator of Cher, has revealed that he has lent items from the popstar's personal archive to the museum. Will the black-sequinned, stomach-baring look she wore to collect the Oscar for her role in Moonstruck at the 1986 Academy Awards go on display? Or the tiger-print jumpsuit she modelled on a tour of Liberace's Hollywood Hills mansion for a 1974 episode of The Sonny And Cher Show? More importantly, will Cher herself attend the gala?