Met Gala 2018 – Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination

With this year’s exhibition promising to be the largest one yet, the Met Gala  will feature over 150 items, of which – thanks to its controversial theme – will include 40 Vatican vestments and accessories spanning 15 papacies… some of which have never left the Vatican before!

These will be on display alongside pieces by Coco Chanel, John Galliano, Cristóbal Balenciaga and exhibition sponsor, Donatella Versace.

Taking place on the first Monday of every May (since it began in 1948 after it was founded by publicist Eleanor Lambert) the event – held at its usual location at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City – is now one of the most glamorous on the A-list calendar and often dubbed ‘the Oscars of fashion‘.

The Met Gala (or the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute benefit, to give it it’s full name) was founded as a means to secure funding for the Costume Institiute, the only one of the Met’s curatorial departments that has to fund itself due to the fact that at the time, fashion was not favourably seen as a form of art.

So why the choice of theme for this year’s Met Gala?

“Some might consider fashion to be an unfitting or unseemly medium by which to engage with ideas about the sacred or the divine, but dress is central to any discussion about religion,” said exhibition curator Andrew Bolton (Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute) at a press conference in Rome. “It affirms religious allegiances and, by extension, it asserts religious differences.”

Well alrighty, then!

In the mean time – and before this year’s fabulous gala begins with Rihanna, Anna Wintour and Amal Clooney as hosts – here are some of the most memorable dresses from previous Met Gala’s throughout the years.

Wonder if pizza will be on the menu this year…

“Fashion and religion have long been intertwined, mutually inspiring and informing one another. Although this relationship has been complex and sometimes contested, it has produced some of the most inventive and innovative creations in the history of fashion.” – Andrew Bolton

 

Speaking of fashion and religion, it was an abomination to God that Ester Canadas and Mark Vanderloo, two of the most beautiful models and human beings on this blessed earth, did not stay together and produce undoubtably even more beautiful babies… (just saying!)