In just one week the 2025 Met Gala will be here. This year’s Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit is “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” and will draw inspiration from the 2009 book Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity by Monica L. Miller. It will explore the style of Black dandies, from the 18th century through present day. As is often the case, the dress code for attendees varies slightly while honoring the exhibit and this year it is “Tailored for You.” And so, we can expect plenty of guests to dress in sharp suiting, as a nod to the menswear focus of the corresponding exhibit.
As we await the day, which is something like a cross between the Superbowl and Oscars for fashion, let’s take a look back at the 6 very best Met Gala themes over the years according to me, a fashion editor who is obsessed with this kind of thing.
2018: Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination
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For many, Heavenly Bodies was the absolute best Met Gala exhibit, with the theme aptly being “Sunday Best.” The exhibit featured papal garb on loan from the Sistine Chapel and guests were encouraged to dress modestly to respect the ecclesiastical pieces. The Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton wanted to show how material Christianity had informed the Catholic imagination, which acknowledging that fashion’s relationship with fate can’t be denied although it has at times been quite controversial.
It is certainly my favorite theme of all time. Sometimes I look back at the images from that red carpet to feel something or believe in the magic of fashion again. Rihanna essentially wore a Margiela papal mitre!!!! Madonna wore Jean Paul Gaultier with a tiara adorned in bedazzled crosses!! Come on! This was fashion at its best, and one of the only times where almost all attendees seemed to fully grasp and try to adhere to the theme.
2015: China: Through the Looking Glass
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As a fashion editor, writing about the Met Gala is part of my job. But as a longtime fashion fan and nerd it is also something I’ve grown up obsessed with. When the First Monday In May documentary came out in 2015, I was freshly out of college and unsure of where my career would take me. I think I watched it twice in one sitting. It peeled back the curtain and gave insight into the inner workings of the exhibit and the event from that year, which was “China Through the Looking Glass.” The exhibit explored Chinese aesthetics on Western fashion, and the dress code was “Chinese White Tie.”
The documentary is partially what inspired me to try and pursue fashion journalism; I just wanted to exist in the universe it invited me into. And so of course I have a soft spot for this exhibit and its theme, which initially concerned many (myself included) that guests would approach it in a way that wasn’t culturally sensitive. But leave it to Rihanna, the undisputed queen of the Met Gala, to show up in the most incredible Met Gala Look of all time a yellow fur-trimmed custom gown by the chinese designer Guo Pei. Andrew Leon Tally seeing it for the first time is a quote that is forever etched in my brain. He exclaimed, “I love a girl from humble beginnings who becomes a big star.”
2013: Punk: Chaos to Couture
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The 2013 Met Gala exhibit explored the Punk subculture’s influence on high fashion, examining its origins in the 1970s through its impact on the early 2000s. The seven galleries paid particular attention to the DIY nature of Punk and how it became an aesthetic for the anti-establishment. The dress code was more straightforward and literally Punk—not actually, that was the dress code. “Punk.”
Kristen Stewart wore red eye makeup. Miley Cyrus wore her bleached blonde hair spiked up with gel. Sienna Miller and Cara Delevigne wore dresses and jackets covered in studs. It’s fun to look back at because while everyone was paying homage to 1970s punk, they were also doing a great job encapsulating the indie sleeve vibe of the time as well, whether they realized it or not.
2011: Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty
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2011 was my first year back home in New York City after my freshman year of college. I waited online with my mom, my cousin and my sister for this exhibit and it’s one of my core memories from that era. Alexander McQueen meant so much to so many people and it was incredible to witness his impact in person. We waited for hours but I didn’t mind at all, it all faded away once we got inside and were able to see over 100 pieces from his 10 year long career, including iconic items like the bumster trouser.
Guest wore outfits that paid to the designer, and given how many of them had personal relationships with him or were personally impacted by his work, the tone of the red carpet was truly unlike any other.
2019: Camp, Notes on Fashion
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The Camp Met Gala exhibit was inspired by Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay, Notes on “Camp.” In her piece Sontag described the essence of Camp as “its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.” She continued by adding, “When something is just bad (rather than Camp), it’s often because the artist hasn’t attempted to do anything really outlandish. ‘It’s too much,’ ‘It’s fantastic,’ ‘It’s not to be believed,’ are standard phrases of Camp enthusiasm.”
I loved this theme because it confused so many. But no one more so than Karlie Kloss who unknowingly would go on to create one of the most viral Met Gala memes of all time. By wearing a simple, gold non-camp cocktail dress and uploading a photo of herself looking in a mirror alongside the tweet, “Looking camp right in the eye” Kloss managed to be ironic without trying…and in turn produced one of the most campy moments of the night.
2017: Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between
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The Rei Kawakubo Met Gala Exhibit in 2017 was the first show at the museum to focus on a living designer since the exhibit in 1983 that examined the work of Yves Saint Laurent. There hasn’t been anything like it since. “Rei Kawakubo is one of the most important and influential designers of the past forty years,” said Andrew Bolton, the costume institute’s curator. “By inviting us to rethink fashion as a site of constant creation, recreation, and hybridity, she has defined the aesthetics of our time.”
The dress code was “avant-garde black tie.” Guests were encouraged to break conventional dressing codes and wear something that honored Kawakubo’s unusual style of dress. No one did it better than Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, who paid homage to Kawakubo’s Broken Brides collection of 2005—two bohemian looks that are very much on everyone’s current moodboard for the boho comeback of 2025.