This story was published on November 8, 2023 and updated on February 16, 2024.
Gird your loins: the 2024 Met Gala is less than three months away. On Thursday, Vogue — whose high priestess, Anna Wintour, has co-chaired the Met Gala since 1995 — revealed the surprisingly dystopian dress code for fashion's biggest night out.
Attendees will don their best interpretations of "The Garden of Time," a reference to J.G. Ballard's 1962 short story of the same name. The tale follows a Count and Countess who live a rather charmed life, surrounded by art and beauty — the trappings of civilization.
But things aren't as rosy as they seem. To stave off an amorphous mob slowly approaching the Count's idyllic villa, he must pluck one of the time-reversing flowers that grows in his garden.
The problem is, there aren't many of these magical flowers left. Eventually, the inevitable happens: The mob descends on the Count and Countess' picture-perfect lives. A little dark, no?
Ballard's story is, as Vogue puts it, about "fleeting beauty." This year's gala guests — which will include co-chairs Zendaya, Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez, and Chris Hemsworth — may take this as a cue to meditate on the evanescence of natural beauty, like the flowers in the Count's garden.
They may also link "The Garden of Time" to the ephemeral nature of fashion, core the 2024 Met Gala theme: “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion."
No, the theme has nothing to do with princesses trapped in an eternal slumber. According to head curator Andrew Bolton, the "Sleeping Beauties" in question are 50 garments too fragile to ever be worn again. These archival pieces will form the basis of the Costume Institute's upcoming exhibition, which the Met Gala fêtes each year (in 2023, it was Karl Lagerfeld retrospective).
Examples include a nearly 150-year-old ballgown by Charles Frederick Worth, widely credited as fashion's first couturier; Christian Dior's famous "Junon" gown from 1949 (Natalie Portman recently wore a recreation of the iconic design to the Cannes Film Festival); and a dress made of razor clams that Alexander McQueen created for his Spring/Summer 2000 collection.
These historic pieces will be exhibited alongside contemporary works by the likes of Phillip Lim, Stella McCartney, and Connor Ives, drawing a through-line between fashion's past and present.
The show will be segmented into three zones: Land, Sea, and Sky, an "ode to nature and the emotional poetics of fashion," according to Bolton.
Given the scope of "Sleeping Beauties," it's safe to say that pulling a Kim Kardashian and wearing a historical artifact won't be the move.
“Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" opens at The Met Costume Institute on May 10, 2024. The 2024 Met Gala is slated to take place on May 6.
