Fashion’s biggest night! Every year, style gurus galore wait with bated breath to see what the world’s biggest celebs wear to the Met Gala, the illustrious annual ball on the first Monday in May. The theme always calls for one’s absolute best, and usually, most fashion-conscious celebs don’t disappoint. But as with every A-List event, there are some fashion wins and fashion losses — and it wouldn’t be right if we didn’t reflect on them all. So, allow us to show you who ~slayed~ and who laid … down in the dirt and admitted style defeat at the last ball.
2019’s Met Gala was the last time Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour gathered together the who’s who of Hollywood for an evening out to benefit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The May 2020 event was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, the 2021 gala ended up being postponed from its usual first Monday in May to September 13.
Fans were originally unsure of exactly what the meaning of the 2019 “Camp: Notes on Fashion” Met Gala theme was all about. But Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton confirmed the name was an allusion to Susan Sontag‘s 1964 essay “Notes on Camp,” in which she defines the term as the “love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.”
“We are going through an extreme Camp moment, and it felt very relevant to the cultural conversation to look at what is often dismissed as empty frivolity but can be actually a very sophisticated and powerful political tool, especially for marginalized cultures,” he told the New York Times in October 2018. “Whether it’s pop Camp, queer Camp, high Camp or political Camp. I think it’s very timely.”
The curator has nearly full creative control over the annual ball. “The theme of every exhibition is decided by Andrew Bolton, who is the chief curator of the Costume Institute,” Anna, 71, previously revealed on the Vogue web series Go Ask Anna. “And he sometimes can make that decision up to five years ahead.”
However, the fashion icon does have some say in the theme. “The only advice I ever really give to Andrew is, whatever the title of the exhibition is, make sure everybody understands it immediately,” she added. “That there can be no confusion about what exhibition is really about.”
Scroll through the gallery to see the best and worst dressed celebs at the 2019 Met Gala.