T-38 days until fashion’s biggest celebration makes its annual return. Each year the Gala is assigned a theme related to one of the museum’s exhibits, and similar to last year, the theme for the 2022 ball is based around the Costume Institute’s In America: A Lexicon of Fashion exhibition.
This two-part homage, chosen by curator Andrew Bolton, has been narrowed down to focus on a specific era— the Gilded Age.
The Gilded Age is marked in American history as the era that sealed the systemic division of the extremely wealthy and the impoverished in the United States— the era in which big business came to life, pushing entrepreneurs such as James J. Hill, Henry Ford, and Andrew Carnegie into economic Olympus and funneling millions of immigrants who sought the so-called American Dream into an inescapable system of poverty.
Like the Gilded Age, the 2022 MET Gala will nod at the disparities of income and wealth in the United States. But was the goal to instantiate this reality? Did the organizers choose to draw focus on this period of history to acknowledge the impact it still has today, or were they more focused on the elegance, opulence, and grandeur the Gilded Age is associated with? No one is really sure, it seems.
One thing I know to expect from this year’s event is to see attendees dressed in looks that utilize gold, sateen, and other materials Gilded Age socialites wore so pompously. Prepare to see Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, and Iris Van Herpen’s looks over-take the carpet as many of their designs invoke the splendor of the 19th-century elite.