Before a single sequin graced the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Costume Institute had already cinched a record-breaking $42 million in fundraising—a sum that would make even the most lavish 18th-century court gown blush. Announced by Met CEO Max Hollein at Monday’s press preview, this year’s tally leaps from last year’s $31 million, proving that the appetite for fashion-as-art is as voracious as ever. Among the 400-plus attendees learning the news were Lauren Sánchez Bezos, Venus Williams, and designers Thom Browne, Michael Kors, and Tory Burch—names that now echo through the newly christened Condé Nast Galleries, with dedicated spaces for Browne and for Kors and his partner Lance Le Pere.
To understand this gilded affair, one must look to lingerie’s own history of transformation. Just as the corset evolved from a tool of constraint to a symbol of empowerment—think of the 1910s ‘health corset’ that freed the ribcage, or the 1960s braless revolution—the Met Gala itself has shape-shifted. Born in 1948 as a midnight supper dubbed ‘the Party of the Year,’ it now stands as the world’s largest museum fundraiser, a direct descendant of the Museum of Costume Art founded by Irene Lewisohn in 1937. That institution merged with the Met in 1946, becoming the Costume Institute—a curatorial department by 1959. Today, its spring exhibition ‘Costume Art’ and these new galleries announce that fashion, like the finest silk chemise, deserves a permanent place in the hallowed halls of art.
Anna Wintour, who has cochaired the gala since 1995, recalled her first attendance in 1982—a $900 Yves Saint Laurent dress, multiple times her monthly rent, bought at Bergdorf Goodman. ‘This is my favorite day of the year, but also my most terrifying,’ she confessed, a sentiment any collector of vintage slips would understand. Sánchez Bezos, the evening’s honorary chair, noted that scientists are now growing sustainable silk, a nod to the Bezos Earth Fund’s $34 million grants for textile innovation. As Venus Williams put it, fashion is ‘a contest about power, strength, will, skill—and having the best dress.’ In that spirit, the Costume Institute now sits at the center of the Met, physically and intellectually, its corset of couture and capital laced ever tighter.
Originally reported by WWD