What will stars wear to the 2024 Met Gala? A look this year’s theme and dress code

The most anticipated party of the year is just around the corner.

Movie stars, musicians and celebrities will walk at the Met Gala, as part of the Costume Institute’s charity event that will take place on May 6 at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

It’s a magical night that draws all the A-listers to New York — and the curiosity of the world, as fans wait to see what kind of outfits their favorite stars will wear

Although creativity at the gala has no limit, the idea behind the guests’ style will be linked to the Met Gala theme.

What does the Met Gala theme mean?

The theme this year will be “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” which is the name of the Costume Institute’s spring 2024 exhibition. That doesn’t mean that celebrities will dress like sleeping beauties, but rather that the exhibition will be based on unique garments from four centuries ago that will be reborn for those who see them.

The exhibition will display around 250 garments and accessories with 400 years of history, visually united by iconography related to nature, which will serve as a metaphor for the fragile, ephemeral nature of fashion and a vehicle to examine cyclical themes of renaissance and renewal, as the museum’s website detailed.

“The show will explore cyclical themes of rebirth and renewal, breathing new life into these storied objects through creative and immersive activations designed to convey the smells, sounds, textures, and motions of garments that can no longer directly interact with the body,” said the Met website.

“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. 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,” said Andrew Bolton, The Costume Institute’s curator in charge.

The exhibition will be a series of “sleeping beauties,” garments that can no longer be dressed on mannequins due to their extreme fragility, displayed in glass “coffins” allowing visitors to analyze their various states of deterioration as if under a microscope. Select “beauties” will be brought back to life by the illusion technique known as Pepper’s ghost. 

The exhibition will run from May 10 to September 2, 2024 following the Met Gala.

What’s the dress code for the Met Gala?

Based on the name of the exhibition, the dress code for celebrities this year is “The Garden of Time.”

As explained in Vogue magazine, the dress code is inspired by a short story written by J.G Ballard, which has the same name of the exhibition and was published in 1962. In this story there is a combination of beauty and destruction, it shows how over time a garden of flowers end up sloppy and graceless.

According to the magazine, it is possible that celebrities are inspired by designs based on melancholic flowers or designs related to time.

Get more Met Gala information here.