Met Gala 2023: What happens inside the event and where do the funds go?

What can we expect?

The first Monday in May is tomorrow, and for anyone even remotely into fashion, you know that means the Met Gala is happening. With Michaela Coel, Penélope Cruz, Roger Federer and Dua Lipa as co-chairs, Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty as the theme and an A-list celeb guest list, it's set to be one hell of an event, as always. Held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the charity event aims to raise funds for the Costume Insitute. Tickets for the glamorous event cost $35,000 per person, and $200-300,000 for a table. With the price of tickets drastically rising since the 90s, not just anybody gets to go, only the most elite. While it might cost an arm and a leg for us regular folk, it's nothing for those who are invited by Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, and at the end of the day, it goes towards charity. In 2018 it was reported that the gala raised $13million for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York City. As mentioned earlier, to attend the Met Gala you must be approved by Anna Wintour, which is not a simple task. You must be on her list of approval, which usually means she will invite you directly, so the everyday person won't appear on the red carpet even if they can afford to. While nobody for sure knows what goes on once the red carpet is finished, there are some things the guests have let slip. Guests must follow certain rules, with no phones or social media allowed, but as we all know, some have managed to get a few inside clips. In 2021, Kendall Jenner gave us a behind the scenes look from the dinner, which usually includes a headline performer. Last year, videos emerged online of Justin Bieber performing, with Rihanna doing it a few years back. And who could forget Kylie Jenner's sneaky pictures from the bathroom? Guests always explore the exhibition before sitting down together for dinner, so that won't be any different this year. Andrew Bolton, head curator of the Museum of Modern Art’s Costume Institute, is focusing on one question, "who gets to be America?", with the exhibition presented over 13 of the American period rooms in the museum. “The stories really reflect the evolution of American style, but they also explore the work of individual tailors, dress-makers, and designers,” he told Vogue. “What’s exciting for me is that some of the names will be very familiar to students of fashion, like Charles James, Halston, and Oscar de la Renta, but a lot of the other names really have been forgotten, overlooked or relegated into the footnotes of fashion history. So one of the main intentions of the exhibition is to spotlight the talents and contributions of these individuals, and many of them are women.” The Met Gala is set to be live-streamed on Monday on Vogue's website and other Conde Nast publications from 5.30pm New York time, which is around 9.30pm Irish time.