It’s Never Too Early to Start Planning Your Met Gala Look—Here Are Some Ideas From the Recent Runways and Beyond

The 2024 Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute exhibition was announced yesterday, and with it the accompanying Met Gala. The show, opening May 10, 2024, is titled “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.” The dress code is months away from being announced, but that didn’t stop the Internet from asking questions about what guests will wear to the Met Gala on May 6. Will it be Sleeping Beauty-style princess gowns? Something Loewe? The LVMH brand is one of the exhibition’s sponsors. Or archive pieces from decades past, the deepest of deep cuts?

As Andrew Bolton, the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute explained, the exhibition will be structured around 15 historically significant pieces from the museum’s collection that are simply too fragile to be worn again—the “Sleeping Beauties” in question. The concept immediately brought to mind one guest at last year’s “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” Gala: Kim Kardashian.

As you may remember, Kardashian wore Marilyn Monroe’s famous “Happy Birthday Mr. President” dress up The Met’s steps before changing into a replica, sparking much debate. From whether it was right to wear a historical gown, to why she did so, to the condition of the piece after the stunt, Kardashian was once again the Internet’s main character. With this new theme, folks online wondered if she’d pull another piece of fashion history to wear to the next year’s Gala. One dress that comes to mind is Alexander McQueen’s breathtaking “Oyster” gown, which Kardashian has in her own closet and wore to the 2020 Vanity Fair Oscars After Party. It was a gift to her from her ex-husband, and there are only two in the world. 

McQueen was much on peoples’ minds yesterday. The Met promoted the new exhibition with a up-close- shot of the butterfly dress from Sarah Burton’s spring 2011 collection for the label. The look, as my eagle-eyed colleague Irene Kim noticed, was worn on screen by Elizabeth Banks in her role as Effie Trinket in The Hunger Games. Trinket had a penchant for the surreal and the bizarre, and wore more than one McQueen piece in the films. The Hunger Games is returning this year with a prequel starring Rachel Zegler and Hunter Schafer. If either of them is in attendance next May 6, maybe they can channel Effie Trinket with a remake of one of these iconic looks. (Folks online are currently fighting it out about Alexander McQueen’s archives and whether looks should be unearthed or remade.)

On the subject of remakes, at the Cannes Film Festival premiere of her upcoming film May December Natalie Portman wore a reimagination of Christian Dior’s 1949 Junon ball gown. That dress will feature in the Met’s exhibit alongside its sister piece, the Venus ball gown. If she attends the Met Gala I could see her closing the chapter almost a year later with a 2024 version of the Venus.

For the more literal-minded attendees, why not be on the nose about it in a true sleeping beauty? Viktor & Rolf’s red satin bed dress from fall 2005, the one that Tilda Swinton made famous in an editorial from 2010, would do the trick.

The theme for the gala has yet to be announced, but there were near approximations of looks we now know are in the exhibition on the spring 2024 runways—see Balmain’s swallow-embroidered jacket. In the meantime here’s a message for hopeful guests in the words of Effie Trinket: May the odds be ever in your favor.