The biggest night in fashion returns to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on Monday, and the theme for this year's Met Gala is Gilded Glamour.
As with past themes, the dress code mirrors the exhibition at the museum's The Costume Institute, for which the Met Gala acts as a fundraiser. Previous themes have included Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination (2018); China: Through the Looking Glass (2015) and Camp: Notes on Fashion (2019). And while each theme has triggered a plethora of beautiful looks, there is more to all of it than only pretty clothes.
Scroll through the gallery above to see some of the best Met Gala looks of all time.
Historic Met Gala themes
Since being founded in 1973, the Costume Institute Benefit, as it was officially called, is a yearly gala dinner and ball to both raise funds for the museum — tickets cost more than $30,000 a head and tables are upwards of $200,000 — and a generator of publicity for the accompanying exhibition.
The first Met Gala was held to celebrate a retrospective of the work of Spanish couturier Cristobal Balenciaga, while in 1983 the museum staged a major retrospective of Yves Saint Laurent. In 1987, it honoured the career of the fashion editor and doyenne Diana Vreeland. In 1990, it stepped in to bolster the then-struggling couture industry with a show called Theatre de la Mode — Fashion Dolls: The Survival of Haute Couture, a theme it returned to again in 1995.
When Italian designer Gianni Versace was murdered in 1997, the museum responded with a show dedicated to his work. Put together in five months, it was a major achievement, as such shows are normally years in the planning.
After two stints hosting the gala, US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour was named as its chairwoman in 1999, bringing with her close industry relationships. Major names such as Gucci, L'Oreal, LVMH, Chanel and Burberry were brought on board as sponsors, alongside the likes of Yahoo, Apple and Instagram.
However, it was perhaps the 2011 show, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, that really pushed the Met Gala into the public realm. Phenomenally successful, the retrospective of the British designer, who took his own life a year earlier, catapulted the gala and the museum into the mainstream, with more than 660,000 visitors, making it the most successful show since The Costume Institute joined the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1946, drawing numbers only matched by the exhibitions featuring the Mona Lisa and the treasures of Tutankhamun.
With the presence of the ever-savvy Wintour, now global chief content officer for Conde Nast, the two exhibitions that have taken place since the pandemic, dictating the theme of the gala, have been redirected back to the achievements of the American fashion industry, with 2021’s In America: A Lexicon of Fashion, and 2022’s In America: An Anthology of Fashion.
2022's Met Gala theme
The 2022 dress code feeds perfectly into this. Glided Glamour evokes visions of New York’s golden age between 1870 and 1890, when it was flush with new-found fortunes. Dubbed the Gilded Age by Mark Twain in 1873, it witnessed the rise of families such as the Astors, the Vanderbilts and the Cooper Hewitts, while the New York Post building became the first ever to be lit with Thomas Edison’s newly invented light bulb.
The city had the verve — and the money — to embrace Alexander Graham Bell’s 1876 invention, the telephone, helping bring women into the workplace for the first time to act as telephone operators, while skyscrapers raced upwards, trying to best the city's first, the Wilder Building. Built by banker and property tycoon Samuel Wilder in 1888, it stretched a giddy 11 stories into the sky.
New mechanised textile factories meant material was cheaper and more available, and New York socialites lost no time in draping themselves in silks, satins and velvets, topped with ruffles, feathers and fringing, all worn with bustles of ridiculous proportions to show off wealth and style. There was a surge in demand for gemstones, as others copied the formidable Caroline Astor, known simply as “The Mrs Astor”, who liked to deck herself in diamonds and emeralds, including a diamond-studded stomacher rumoured to have once belonged to the French queen Marie Antoinette. Not surprisingly, jewellery houses such as Tiffany’s benefitted hugely during this period.
In response to this explosion of fashion across the city, New York's Gilded Age gave rise to publications to help ladies navigate this new world, with the magazine Harper’s Bazaar being launched in 1867, followed by Vogue in 1893.
Fast-forward to 2022 and, like cities everywhere, New York faces many challenges as it tries to pick itself up after the pandemic, hoping to lure back tourists and re-energise its status on the world stage. The Met Gala's nod to the Big Apple’s golden era is, therefore, no coincidence, helping the city to reclaim its rightful position as the home of fashion on the first Monday in May, one dazzling sequin at a time.
This article was originally published on April 13, 2022.
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The specs
Engine: 2.5-litre, turbocharged 5-cylinder
Transmission: seven-speed auto
Power: 400hp
Torque: 500Nm
Price: Dh300,000 (estimate)
On sale: 2022
FIGHT%20CARD
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BUNDESLIGA FIXTURES
Saturday, May 16 (kick-offs UAE time)
Borussia Dortmund v Schalke (4.30pm)
RB Leipzig v Freiburg (4.30pm)
Hoffenheim v Hertha Berlin (4.30pm)
Fortuna Dusseldorf v Paderborn (4.30pm)
Augsburg v Wolfsburg (4.30pm)
Eintracht Frankfurt v Borussia Monchengladbach (7.30pm)
Sunday, May 17
Cologne v Mainz (4.30pm),
Union Berlin v Bayern Munich (7pm)
Monday, May 18
Werder Bremen v Bayer Leverkusen (9.30pm)
THE DETAILS
Kaala
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Rating: 1.5/5
The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo
Power: 178hp at 5,500rpm
Torque: 280Nm at 1,350-4,200rpm
Transmission: seven-speed dual-clutch auto
Price: from Dh209,000
On sale: now
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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