Met Gala 2023 guest list

Next year's theme will celebrate the late Karl Lagerfeld's 65+ years in fashion.

The countdown to the 2023 Met Gala is officially underway as organizers for The Costume Institute Benefit announce next year’s theme: Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty.

The annual spring exhibition, which will run from May 5 through July 16, will honor the work of the late designer, who forever changed the fashion landscape while working as a creative director at Chloé, Fendi and most notably, Chanel. Lagerfeld was also renowned for his eponymous label, which he founded in 1984.

The 2023 Met Gala theme will “[focus] on the designer’s stylistic vocabulary as it was expressed in through lines — aesthetic themes that appear time and again— in his fashions from the 1950s to his final collection in 2019,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art said in a press release.

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The Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty exhibition will showcase 150 pieces with original sketches by Lagerfeld himself, which “underscore his complex creative process and the collaborative relationships with his premières.”

As per usual, the first Monday of May 2023 is expected to be the biggest night in fashion with the Met Gala attracting A-list celebrities across all genres and the best of luxury fashion. In years past, designers have been tasked to create looks for themes such as “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” (2022), “Camp: Notes on Fashion” (2019) and “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and Catholic Imagination” (2018).

In addition to the 2023 Met Gala’s theme, fans and celebrities alike are eagerly awaiting the announcement of next year’s celebrity co-chairs. Those selected will join an elite group of individuals who handpick the invite-only guest list and help craft the night’s menu. Last year’s co chairs were Regina King, Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, and Lin-Manuel Mirada.

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Emily Weaver

Emily is a NYC-based freelance entertainment and lifestyle writer — though, she’ll never pass up the opportunity to talk about women’s health and sports (she thrives during the Olympics). Read more

It’s official: the theme for the 2023 Met Gala is “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty.” The exhibition will examine the life—and creative legacy—of the late designer, who shaped the face of fashion for more than half a century.

The theme announcement is an important one. It dictates the dress code (celebrities, designers, and change-makers are challenged to create costumes that serve as both a fashion statement and a tribute to the concept), the decor, and most importantly,  the larger purpose of the night itself. The gala is, yes, a major star-studded fundraising event, but its importance goes beyond dollars raised and social media impressions made. It’s a grand display of art as fashion and fashion as art, showing how both forms comprise and define our cultural fabric. 

Each theme is chosen with the utmost consideration—what story does this tell? What history does it teach? In 2018, “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” showcased hundreds of holy items from the Vatican. A few years earlier, “China: Through the Looking Glass” celebrated China’s influence on Western and Eastern design, while May 2019 explored “Camp” and its exaggerated artifice.

Below, we’ve charted out each year’s Met Gala theme dating back to 1995, the first year Anna Wintour became a chair of the event. 

2022: “In America: An Anthology of Fashion”

“In America: An Anthology of Fashion” was the second part of the Metropolitan Museum's examination of American fashion. (The first, “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion,” debuted in September 2021 and served as the theme for that year's Met Gala.) Whereas “Lexicon” was an expansive look at American fashion as a whole—especially its younger designers—Anthology acted as a historical retrospective on both the designs and the stories of their makers: “The stories really reflect the evolution of American style, but they also explore the work of individual tailors, dress-makers, and designers,” Andrew Bolton, the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute, explains. “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.”

2021: In America: A Lexicon of Fashion

Andrew Bolton, The Costume Institute’s Wendy Yu Curator in Charge, told Vogue he centered the 2021 event around the question “who gets to be American?” which was originally posed on a red, white, and blue silk sash from Prabal Gurung’s tenth anniversary collection. “American designers are at the forefront of conversations around diversity, inclusivity, sustainability, gender fluidity, and body positivity,” he said. “The framework of the show enables us to focus on the younger designers who are engaging thoughtfully and deeply with those ideas.” The exhibition included over 100 pieces from American designers, ranging from Marc Jacobs to La Réunion.

Guests, which included co-chairs Timothée Chalamet, Billie Eilish, Amanda Gorman, and Naomi Osaka, abided by the night's official dress code: American independence.

Photo: Getty Images

Rihanna in Balenciaga Couture, Maria Tash, Thelma West and BVLGARI jewelry and A$AP Rocky in ERL

2020: “About Time: Fashion and Duration”

The 2020 gala was postponed indefinitely due to the pandemic, but its theme is still worth revisiting:  In honor of the Met’s 150th anniversary, “About Time” took a look back at a century-and-a-half’s worth of fashion. Bolton found inspiration in Orlando, the 1992 film based on the Virginia Woolf novel of the same name. “What I like about Woolf’s version of time is the idea of a continuum,” Bolton said. “There’s no beginning, middle, or end. It’s one big fat middle. I always felt the same about fashion. Fashion is the present.”

2019: “Camp: Notes on Fashion”

For 2019’s exhibition, Bolton drew on Susan Sontag’s seminal 1964 essay, “Notes on ‘Camp’.” The essay describes a sensibility marked by performance, excess, and a kind of winking bad taste exemplified by figures like Oscar Wilde and outré aesthetic movements such as Art Nouveau. Among the pieces on display were dazzling looks from Off-White, Schiaparelli, Moschino, Dior, Thom Browne, and lots more.

Photo: Getty Images

Lady Gaga in Brandon Maxwell

2018: “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”

2018’s divine theme had hundreds of holy items on display, including dozens of artifacts and objects sent over from the Vatican (most of which had never seen the light beyond Rome). Guests rose to the occasion at the annual gala, with Rihanna dressing as the pope and Katy Perry as an angel (wings and all).

Photo: Getty Images

Madonna in Jean Paul Gaultier and Narcisa Pheres jewelry

2017: “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between”

The Met gala toasted the legendary Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo and featured her “objects,” as she likes to call them. Some guests, like Rihanna and Caroline Kennedy, stuck to the theme and sported original pieces, while others interpreted the topic through other designers. The event was co-chaired by Katy Perry and Pharrell Williams.

Photo: Getty Images

Ysaunny Brito and Olivier Rousteing in Balmain

2016: “Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology”

The exclusive event went back to the future with tech at the forefront. Stars like Claire Danes literally lit up the ball in a glowing gown, while Emma Watson wore a five-piece Calvin Klein Collection set, which was made from recycled plastic bottles. The exhibition itself focused on the dichotomy between handmade and machine-made fashion, displaying more than 100 pieces of haute couture and ready-to-wear.

Photo: Getty Images

Beyoncé in a Givenchy Haute Couture dress and Lorraine Schwartz jewelry

2015: “China: Through the Looking Glass”

The gala celebrated China’s influence on Western fashion with a theme fit for an emperor. The exhibition was a joint effort between the head of the museum’s Department of Asian Art and the Costume Institute, showing looks from Chanel, Alexander McQueen, and Christian Dior Haute Couture. Attendees from George and Amal Clooney to Rihanna (wearing a stunning yellow robe by Chinese designer Guo Pei) dressed on-theme for a night at the museum.

Photo: Getty Images

Beyoncé in a Givenchy dress and Lorraine Schwartz jewelry

2014: “Charles James: Beyond Fashion”

The museum celebrated a major figure in the fashion world, but one less known to the general public. The Charles James theme was lively and highly anticipated, with a display of 100 of his most important designs. Co-chaired by Sarah Jessica Parker, Bradley Cooper, and Oscar de la Renta, the party was filled with ball gowns of the sleek and larger-than-life variety.

Photo: Getty Images

Arizona Muse in Ralph & Russo Couture

From designer retrospective to celebrations of the supernatural, see all the themes of the last two decades, below:

2013: “Punk: Chaos to Couture”

2012: “Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations”

2011: “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty”

2010: “American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity”

2009: “The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion”

2008: “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy”

2007: “Poiret: King of Fashion”

2006: “AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion”

2005: “The House of Chanel”

2004: “Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century”

2003: “Goddess: The Classical Mode”

2002: No theme

2001: “Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years”

2000: No theme

1999: “Rock Style”

1998: “Cubism and Fashion”

1997: “Gianni Versace”

1996: “Christian Dior”

1995: “Haute Couture”

See The Best Met Gala Looks of All Time

Photo: Getty Images

Kate Moss in Calvin Klein, 1995

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