Last November, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute revealed that theme for this May’s Met Gala, is “Costume Art,” a capacious conceit that positions the museum’s five-millennia spanning collection in dialogue with the dressed body (never mind its nonrepresentational holdings). The Met Gala dress code has now been announced, and it pairs neatly: airy to the point of apolitical, a truth too apparent to debate—”Fashion is Art.”
The assertion supports the theme laid out last year by Andrew Bolton, the curator in charge of the Costume Institute: “Over the last two decades, fashion has increasingly gained acceptance as a subject worthy of the same serious contemplation as that accorded the traditional arts—painting and sculpture,” Bolton said at a press conference. “Fashion’s acceptance as an art form, however, has occurred very much on art’s terms, being premised on its renunciation of all connections with the body.”
The show will feature roughly 400 objects, juxtaposing couture fashions with artworks and artifacts, all staged to inaugurate the Met’s new Condé M. Nast Galleries, adjacent to the Great Hall.
The co-chairs for the 2026 Met Gala were previously announced as Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour. Members of the Gala Host Committee, co-chaired by Anthony Vaccarello and Zoë Kravitz, include Sabrina Carpenter, Doja Cat, Gwendoline Christie, Alex Consani, and Misty Copeland.
The exhibition is structured around a “typology of bodies,” loosely grouped into three categories, from sinewy classical nudes to forms less often celebrated in fashion, such as pregnant or aging bodies. The dress code invites gala attendees to treat the body as an ever-inspiring muse—whatever shapes the dresses take, we’ll see in May.
“Costume art is a celebration of the body in all of its strengths and weaknesses, its resiliencies and vulnerabilities, its perfections and imperfections, its idiosyncrasies and commonalities, its sublime beauty, its wondrous complexity, its glorious and miraculous diversity,” per Bolton.
The museum hosts the art-and-fashion ball each year on the first Monday of May to support its Costume Institute, which holds around 33,000 objects across seven centuries of fashion history. Guests are invited to the gala by invitation and a single ticket can cost up to $50,000.
