The first Monday in May… a time to indulge in every fashion lover’s dream: the annual Met Gala. Since its conception in 1948, the Met Gala has been raising money for the Met’s Costume Institute, but more importantly, it’s provided us with iconic, memorable and glamorous looks for decades.
Eleanor Lambert, a New York City fashion publicist (also responsible for New York Fashion Week), put the Met Gala into action and hosted the very first Met Gala, which used to switch locations each year. The gala was originally named “The Party of the Year” and was a midnight dinner party attended by New York’s fashion industry and high-society New Yorkers.
The then editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, Diana Vreeland, introduced the idea of themes in the 1970s and permanently moved the location of the gala to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vreeland’s very first theme was “Fashion Plate.” Some past themes under Vreeland were “Man and the Horse,” “The Eighteenth-Century Woman,” and “The Manchu Dragon: Costumes of China, the Ch'ing Dynasty.”
Vogue’s current editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour, then took the gala and stabilized it on the first Monday of May each year to align with the Costume Institute's annual exhibit. Wintour also launched the Met Gala to the level of influence and media reach it has now, fit with an exclusive guest list of the biggest stars of modern times.
What should we expect this year? The 2025 Met Gala theme is “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” inspired by guest curator Monica L. Miller’s book Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity.
![Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity [Book]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61tFJM4RwEL.jpg)
As Miller writes in her book, “the history of Black Dandyism illustrates how Black people have transformed from being enslaved and stylized as luxury items, acquired like any other signifier of wealth and status, to autonomous, self-fashioning individuals who are global trendsetters."
Post-Emancipation and into the Harlem Renaissance, the Black American community was able to reclaim their culture, their style and themselves as individuals. We should expect to see a lot of the zoot suit this year, a suit composed of high-rise draper pants and oversized jackets with large lapels, popularized and worn by Black men during the World War II era.
This will be the first time in more than 20 years that the Met Gala theme will focus exclusively on menswear. Colman Domingo, A$AP Rocky, Lewis Hamilton and Pharrell Williams are all co-chairs for this year’s gala. LeBron James will also act as an honorary chair member.
Written by Macy Berendsen