Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, The 2024 Met Gala Theme, and What You Need to Know

After much anticipation, the 2024 Met Gala theme has been announced—Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion. But what does it mean? Andrew Boulton and Wendy Yu, exhibition curator and curator in charge of the Metropolitan’s Costume Institute, have explained that the exhibition will feature historical garments that are too fragile to be worn again. The core exhibition will span from the 17th century to the 21st century. The exhibition will be based around 3 main zones: land, sea, and sky, as an ode to their natural materials. The exhibition is, however, better known for the opening red carpet on the first Monday in May—the Met Gala, where celebrities are invited to dress to match the exhibition theme, which is heavily covered by the media.

So, what can we expect on the red carpet? There are many guesses about what the celebrities will wear. Since the theme is centred around reawakening old pieces, can we expect stylists to pull from the archives for their outfits? Will we see recreations of some of the most culturally significant outfits from throughout history? Or, as many have predicted, will the celebrities be off-theme? One of the largest criticisms of the Met Gala every year is that many of the celebrities do not match the theme, especially when the theme is historical. It is expected that many of the celebrities will not read past the title, and we should expect many sleep-themed looks, or plenty of fairytale Auroras and Maleficents.

Many fashion and history lovers are also critical of the theme being centred around fragile historical garments. When the Met allowed Kim Kardashian to wear Marilyn Monroe’s Happy Birthday dress at the 2021 Met Gala, Kardashian, Ripley's and the Met all received a large amount of criticism from fashion writers, conservationists and the public for allowing this extremely delicate, one-of-a-kind dress to be worn. The irony of the theme has not been lost on the public.

So why does anyone care? The Met Gala is a major event in the fashion world, organised by Dame Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue and Global Editorial Director of Condé Nast, Vogue’s parent company. Most importantly, the Met Gala is a fundraiser for the Met Museum’s Costume Institute, everyone you see walk the red carpet has paid for a ticket to be there. The maintenance of cultural institutions is extremely important and the study of fashion throughout history can reveal many things about the society, culture and the people that wore the clothes during that time. However, Abby Cox, dress historian and content creator, highlights the misogyny involved in the study of dress history in comparison to other areas of history, “The Costume Institute is one of, if not the only, department at the Met that has to come up with its own funding. That is why the Met Gala started so many years ago. They don’t have outside funding, they don’t have funding from the museum itself. They have to earn their own money to maintain their own collection. So this kind of hearkens back to how clothing collection and clothing acquisition, and antique clothing departments, and costume, and textile departments are not treated equally. And there’s misogyny in there too because obviously clothing is ‘women’s work’ and it’s not considered fine art”. The same is often said about art and humanities, especially to students looking to pursue careers in those areas. It is important to continue to create and study culture, and to support those who are looking to do so.