Solely Ladies’s Put on Each day lined the occasion till 1958. To drum up pleasure across the first-ever Get together of the 12 months, in October of 1948 WWD printed an article titled “Profit Get together for Costume Institute Set: Affair Nov. 18 to Mark First Gala Get-Collectively of Vogue Trade—25 Branches Represented.” The price to attend the shindig? $50. “For a very long time it has been stated that the style business ought to have one massive get-together every year…the committee hopes that this social gathering will develop into an annual occasion as necessary because the Beaux Arts ball was once,” Lambert instructed the publication.
Little did she know simply how necessary the occasion would develop into. By 1958, the Costume Institute had expanded its footprint on the Met—making the annual gala much more important.
The Met Gala, the Vreeland years
1972-1987
In 1972, Diana Vreeland, the imaginative editor in chief of Vogue from 1963 to 1971, utilized her endless creativity to the Costume Institute as a guide for the Met. The famously extravagant Vreeland had been let go from her place at Vogue, and so she channeled her eccentricities into crafting and curating exhibitions from 1972 to 1989. They tended to be extra fantastical than scholarly—and by that very same token, she would remodel the Get together of the 12 months into an occasion extra becoming of its identify.
Her 1973 exhibition, “The World of Balenciaga,” garnered a lot consideration. Opening a 12 months after the grasp couturier’s demise, the present was an ode to his decades-long profession; Vreeland even spritzed Balenciaga fragrance all through the galleries. That very same 12 months, the social gathering actually took off: Not solely did it now happen on the Met Museum itself (particularly, the Medieval Sculpture Corridor), however Oscar de la Renta additionally designed the tablecloth for the dinner of pâté, potage, blanquette de veau, salad, and brie, as reported by the New York Occasions.
In later years, Vreeland additionally known as upon her anyone-who’s-anyone Rolodex to amplify the occasion. Jackie Kennedy Onassis served as co-chair of the gala in each 1976 and 1977, and legendary inside designer Billy Baldwin was tasked with dealing with the decor.
The ultimate Costume Institute exhibition curated by Vreeland—earlier than that accountability went to style students and The Met’s personal curators—was 1986’s “Dance.” In 1987, the exhibition “In Model: Celebrating Fifty Years of the Costume Institute” celebrated 50 years of the Costume Institute, and the gala in December honored Ms. Vreeland and her many contributions to the division—although Vreeland herself was notably absent. (She would move away in 1989.)
