Met Gala sets Costume Art theme and Fashion is Art dress code
Updated
Updated · The Conversation · May 3
Met Gala sets Costume Art theme and Fashion is Art dress code
8 articles · Updated · The Conversation · May 3
The 2026 event, held on the first Monday in May for New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, links the gala to the Costume Institute exhibition opening the next day.
Organisers say the concept presents fashion as an embodied art form, examining ties between clothing, the body, the wearer and artistic expression.
The gala, founded in 1948 and reshaped into a celebrity-focused spectacle under Anna Wintour from 1995, continues to use annual themes to frame wider cultural debates about fashion's artistic status.
Amidst boycotts over corporate ties, can the Met Gala still credibly celebrate fashion as a pure, expressive art form?
Lagerfeld saw fashion as commerce; Schiaparelli saw it as art. Which vision will define fashion's future in an activist era?
As 'smart becomes the new hot,' is fashion's embrace of intellect a genuine artistic evolution or just the latest marketing trend?