Met Gala 2024: What does the theme ‘Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’ mean?

Fashion’s biggest night is just hours away. The 2024 Met Gala will have some of the world’s most prominent celebrities walking the red carpet dressed in designer best. The theme of this year’s Gala stems from the latest exhibition by the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art- ‘Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’. So one can expect fairytale meets couture on the red carpet at this year’s Met Gala 2024. 

“When an item of clothing enters our collection, its status is changed irrevocably. What was once a vital part of a person’s lived experience is now a motionless ‘artwork’ that can no longer be worn or heard, touched, or smelled. The exhibition endeavors to reanimate these artworks by re-awakening their sensory capacities through a diverse range of technologies, affording visitors sensorial ‘access’ to rare historical garments and rarefied contemporary fashions,” curator Andrew Bolton told CBS News. 

“By appealing to the widest possible range of human senses, the show aims to reconnect with the works on display as they were originally intended—with vibrancy, with dynamism, and ultimately with life.”  

 

The theme goes hand-in-hand with a dress code, dubbed ‘The Garden of Time.’ 

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The Garden of Time – dress code of 2024 Met Gala

The Met Gala’s dress code is usually quite loosely interpreted by guests. Creative minds go wild in their imagination and interpret the dress code into grand costumes. Some are usually on point while others lead to a lot of conversations and even memorable red-carpet moments. 

What exhibition is the 2024 Met Gala theme celebrating?

‘Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’ is the theme that the exhibits at the Met Gala will be following. The theme is inspired by the garments that are on display at the Met. Roughly 250 garments will be shown from the Costume Institute’s collection of 33,000 pieces. Many of the ones that will be on display are typically never shown as they are too fragile and have a chance of falling apart.

Instead, they will be laid on glass cases,just like the fabled Sleeping Beauty. 

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“The Met’s innovative spring 2024 Costume Institute exhibition will push the boundaries of our imagination and invite us to experience the multisensory facets of a garment, many of which get lost when entering a museum collection as an object. Sleeping Beauties will heighten our engagement with these masterpieces of fashion by evoking how they feel, move, sound, smell and interact when being worn, ultimately offering a deeper appreciation of the integrity, beauty and artistic brilliance of the works on display,” Met Museum Director Max Hollein said.    

How is The Garden of Time connected with Sleeping Beauty?

Everyone knows of the classic fable Sleeping Beauty- which narrates the story of a beautiful princess who is sent into a magical sleep only to be reawakened by the kiss of her true love, a prince charming. For centuries, the story sets out a message of how true love will conquer all. 

The Garden of Time is a short story by JG Ballard. The story concerns a couple living in a beautiful home. 

The story has a mob slowly making its way inevitably toward them, bringing destruction. In the couple’s garden grow “time flowers,” and each one that is plucked sends the mob back in time, further away from their inevitable arrival at their home. The garden eventually stops growing new flowers, and the destruction of their exquisite home and life together is inevitable. 

The exhibition itself, like a garden, promises to be a multisensory experience, designed to stimulate all the senses and remain true to the two fables. The galleries will be arranged “exploring a different theme inspired by the natural world,” the Met said. 

Like, one of the floors of one gallery space will be animated with snakes, and the ceiling of another with a projection of birds. 

What were past Met Gala themes through the years?

The Met Gala has had many memorable themes over the years. Last year’s theme honoured fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld. In 2021 and 2022, the In America theme served as parts one and two of a look back at American fashion through the years.

The 2020 gala was postponed due to the pandemic, but its theme was ‘About Time: Fashion and Duration.’ In 2019, the theme was ‘Camp: Notes on Fashion.’