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Inspired by the ‘Garden of Time’, celebrities flocked to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s gala on Monday, a must-see New York event at the intersection of fashion, popular culture and philanthropy.

A dark suit with signature seams and a large hat evoking the Tudor era, reggaeton prince Bad Bunny set the tone, a bouquet of black flowers in hand, as he walked the steps of the prestigious museum heading back to Central Park.

Actress Zendaya, dressed as the Puerto Rican artist by John Galliano (Maison Margelia), appeared in a bias-cut dress in electric blue and emerald tones, a veil and a delicate feather on her head. Then we saw her again in another scene, a dress with a long black train and a hat overflowing with roses.

Zendaya, 27, and Bad Bunny, 30, co-chaired the evening, along with Jennifer Lopez, whose sheer and sparkly Schiaparelli dress detailed wings, Marvel actor Chris Hemsworth and the event’s high priest, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour.

Bad Bunny felt ‘blessed’. “Thanks to a dream I was working for, others (dreams) came that I hadn’t even thought about,” said the artist, one of the most flowable in the world.

Time sands

In the evening, a few hundred pro-Palestine demonstrators came to the famous 5th avenue where the museum is, shouting ‘viva Palestina’. The police, who arrested several people, kept them at a distance behind barriers, AFP journalists noted.

Behind other obstacles, hundreds of fans tried to catch a glimpse of famous people. Some may be disappointed that Rihanna, one of the expected ones, did not appear. With the ‘sleeping beauties’ theme, and the ‘Garden of Time’ dress code, referencing a short story by science fiction writer JG Ballard about timeless beauty, the creations emphasized nature.

There were flowers everywhere. Dressed up, in shapes of ruffles, on dress trains, in accessories, we have seen them on the actress Uma Thurman, the rapper Nicki Minaj, the singers Erykah Badu, Camila Cabello, or the French artist the most listened to in the world, Aya Nakamura, platinum blonde hair and a shiny, sensible dress.

South African singer Tyla’s strapless Balmain dress, reminiscent of the sands of time – right down to the hourglass accessory – was sculpted so close to her body that she had to carry up the stairs.

TikTok and AI

To be rude, we could count on Lana Del Rey, whose dark fingers rose on her dress holding a veil of tulle in the shape of a canopy above her head. Or the rapper Cardi B, whose train needed nine porters in tuxedos. She compared it to a ‘black rose’. The carpet was also walked by the head of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, whose video request is popular with young people, but in the eyes of the American authorities, who support the evening.

The purpose of the Met Gala is to fund the fashion department of the prestigious museum, ‘The Costume Institute’. According to the New York Times, a seat at this year’s dinner costs $75,000, a full menu costs $350,000 and the previous edition brought in about $22 million.

The event, which will take place on the first Monday in May and coincides with the opening of the main annual exhibition of the ‘Costume Institute’, will be released to the media in the morning. This year, the Met took advantage of technology to awaken its ‘sleeping beauties’, in other words the most valuable, original and sometimes most fragile pieces from an incredible collection of 33,000 clothes and accessories telling several centuries of history. ‘ the history of fashion.

Like this silk satin ball gown embellished with embroidery and trimmed with chiffon from the house of Worth that can no longer be dressed on a mannequin. The 1887 piece is shown flat, but it has also been recreated in computer graphics and comes to life again, with the ruffles used, in hologram form.

Through the pieces, immersion can be achieved through sounds, those in the Alexander McQueen dress made entirely of shells, whose sounds have been recreated. But also through smells, like menthol cigarettes coming out of a hat from the middle of the 20th century. To achieve this, the odorous molecules were isolated through an extraction process and reproduced in tubes that the visitor could smell.

The museum also collaborated with artificial intelligence expert OpenAI to allow visitors to chat with 20th century New York socialite Natalie Potter about the stunning cathedral train dress she wore on her wedding day on 4 December 1930.

/ATS