This Year The Met Gala Takes On A Religious Theme: Heavenly Bodies; Fashion And The Catholic Imagination.

Met Gala 2018 theme has been revealed as Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, with the Costume Institute announcing its exhibition of the same name, to open in May. The hosts for the evening will be Rihanna, Amal Clooney and Donatella Versace, the latter of whom is also a sponsor of the exhibition.

What is the Met Gala?

The Costume Institute Gala at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is the biggest event on the fashion fundraising calendar. Founded by publicist Eleanor Lambert, the benefit was first held in 1948 to encourage donations from New York’s high society. In its modern incarnation, the most famous faces from the realms of fashion, film, music and art come together to raise money for the Met’s Costume Institute and celebrate the grand opening of its latest exhibition. The night is centred on the theme of the new exhibition, with previous themes encompassing everything from Manus x Machina and Punk: Chaos to Couture to China: Through the Looking Glass.

What is the significance of the Met Gala 2018 theme?

Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination will feature some 40 Vatican vestments and accessories spanning 15 papacies, which curator Andrew Bolton is said to have visited at least 10 times to secure pieces which have never left the Vatican’s possession before. Items such as Pope Benedict XV’s white silk cape embroidered with gold thread and the pointed bishop’s hat of Pope Leo XIII, will go on display alongside pieces by Coco Chanel, who was educated by nuns, John Galliano, Cristóbal Balenciaga and Donatella Versace, who is a sponsor of the exhibition.

The Met Gala 2018 theme is being cited as the Met’s most controversial yet, owing to the positioning of these fashion garments alongside sacred artefacts. Bolton, however, has defended his curation: “Some might consider fashion to be an unfitting or unseemly medium by which to engage with ideas about the sacred or the divine, but dress is central to any discussion about religion,” he said at a press conference in Rome. “It affirms religious allegiances and, by extension, it asserts religious differences.”

 

“Fashion reflects the world around us and nobody understands that more clearly than Andrew,” Wintour, museum trustee and Met Gala 2018 co-chair, told the press. “When I go to these fashion exhibitions. I’m always so amazed to see people from all sides of the globe and all walks of life really studying the exhibitions, understanding that fashion does not operate in a vacuum.”

 

 

The exhibition itself will address the influence of religious and liturgical clothing on fashion, from Cristóbal Balenciaga to Donatella Versace. Around 150 ensembles are set to be on display, including pieces by Coco Chanel, who was educated by nuns, and by John Galliano. The exhibition will be spread across three venues: the Anna Wintour Costume Center, the medieval galleries at the Met’s main location, and at the Cloisters, further uptown.