Wh
bathroom selfies, looted art,
and the Vatican all have in common?
Well, it's often called the party of the year,
but you probably know it as the Met Gala.
It's held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York on the first Monday of May.
It is super exclusive and the tickets are
ridiculously expensive.
Trust me, we will get into the numbers later.
So since we can't go,
we're going to take you to our own museum,
the
It's not just a party, though. It's...
Essentially a fundraiser.
Celebrities and people from,
you know, the business world, the sports world,
the fashion world can be in for a dinner party
and a fundraiser once a year.
Each year has a theme. And it all starts...
-[camera clicks] -..on the red carpet.
Now this is the part that most of us see each year.
-[cameras clicking] -Crazy outfits, celebrities, and
often some controversies.
More on that in a bit.
After the red carpet, the guests get a tour
of a costume exhibit based on the year's theme.
From there they head into the Great Hall,
which is often transformed into a dinner party
where they have performances from major artists
like Rihanna, Lady Gaga, and The Weeknd.
The dinner party rages on and most of the guests
then head to exclusive after parties.
But there is one more stop in this tour we need to make
before the guests head to their parties:
the bathroom.
[toilet flushes]
All kinds of celebs post pictures from the bathroom.
Why?
Remember I said this is a super exclusive event?
-[buzzer] -There's a social media ban
and no one is supposed to take pictures,
but for some reason the bathroom seems to be
the place to break the rules.
OK.
Next we're heading over to the Hall of History
to learn what this Met Gala thing is all about.
It's a fundraiser for the Costume Institute,
an organization that collects and preserves costumes.
OK, now this dress is typical of what someone
would have wore to the first Met Gala in 1948.
For a few decades it was a lot more low key
than what we're used to seeing in recent years.
It started off as a midnight dinner.
Tickets cost only $50.00.
The gala pretty much stayed the same until 1972
when celebrities like Bianca Jagger started
showing up wearing something like this.
And in 1973 it started having official themes
based off the costume exhibits.
And it was around this time
that the event started being held at the Met.
[clang]
The event became increasingly popular and glamorous,
with the next big change coming in 1995.
That's when
took over running the event,
and it really started to look like what we see today.
Oh yeah, this outfit.
It's the one Diana, Princess of Wales,
wore in 1996 right after Wintour took over.
And those $50 tickets from the early days,
which is about $630 in today's money,
they've gone up a bit.
This year, one ticket costs about $50,000 per person.
And if you're a brand or a designer who wants to
buy a dinner table at the Met Gala,
it actually costs somewhere closer to $300,000.
All right, you've seen a few looks from the Gala,
but to check out some more,
we need to head to another hall in our museum.
Welcome to the Hall of Controversies.
The first thing we're going to look at
is this closet of skeletons, because the Met Gala has a few.
Now check out this one.
Yeah, that's just a photo of the museum.
Why?
The very place the Met Gala is held at
has been in some trouble recently.
There have been artefacts and art seized from the museum
because they were believed to have been looted.
Next up, we're taking a look at some themes
that have been criticized.
In 2015, the theme was "China Through the Looking-Glass."
There were a number of controversial outfits
and some people just got it wrong.
Lady Gaga came dressed wearing a kimono,
which is, you know, a Japanese garment,
not a Chinese piece of clothing.
In 2018, the gala had a Roman Catholic theme.
There was criticism and outrage
all over the place with this one,
with critics saying it undermined
and commodified the religion.
Rihanna even dressed up like the Pope.
Our next controversy is this year's theme.
It's Karl Lagerfeld, and he has ruffled some feathers,
and not the ones on the costumes he designed.
There's been some criticism around the choice to
choose Lagerfeld as the theme for this year's Met Gala because
of comments that he's made in the past,
things that critics felt were
sexist, fatphobic, insensitive
after the Me Too movement.
[tape rewinds]
All right, whew, back outside our
Sorry I couldn't actually take you inside the party,
but at least you know what looted artefacts
and bathroom selfies have in common, right?
That's it for
For
I'm Sophia Smoke signing off.