“I remember the first Met Gala… The theme was ‘The Wheel’.”
It wasn’t always “The First Monday in May”. The inaugural Met Gala was a Thursday in November…
The Rainbow Room. Rockefeller Center’s most glamorous attraction – and its most renowned, discounting Radio City Music Hall. Since 1934, the nightclub catered to New York’s haut monde, even if, fourteen years on, it hadn’t returned to interbellum capacity. Halcyon days when one elevator to its location on 30 Rock’s upper level was reserved for men in white-tie. (Loungewear being hoisted to the 65th floor in “second-class”.) Nonetheless, between its wartime shuttering and relaunch in 1950, it furnished an ideal venue for private events. “Benefit Party for Costume Institute” in November ‘48, the brainchild of modish Manhattanites, was one of them.
There’s scant material relating to the maiden “Met Gala” online. Coverage relates how the first guests, for fifty bucks a head, gathered for midnight supper at the Waldorf in December. It’s even repeated in official accounts, such as those written by Vogue’s Hamish Bowles, with Anna Wintour’s foreword. A cursory look at primary sources (old editions of Fashion Calendar on the Internet Archive) proves it actually happened a month earlier. At the Rainbow Room. Pedantic, I know. But I relish any opportunity to feel part of an intellectual club. And the sartorial scene to which I, with all the style of an overfed toddler, have been excluded.
At least, they got the price right! $50 in 1948 has a modern buying power of approximately $663. A steal compared to $75,000 for today’s tickets. (Would you prefer a photo-op on some steps or standing room for Othello with Denzel Washington?)
At its inception, there were no themes, no celebrities, no cameras, and certainly no stylists. This was a time when ladies donned gowns from their personal wardrobes. When jewellery was owned, not rented. When men were men, and women knew it – or so the saying goes. And we just had one or two novelty gays. Preferable! Nor was the shindig entirely the preserve of socialites. That came later. There was something quasi-democratic about it; or at least, it possessed a precise purpose. As a fundraising initiative.
Naturally, today’s equivalent retains the almsgiving. It wouldn’t do to style it, truthfully, as “empty PR racket”. (The “Party of the Year” was 1948’s spin.) And I’m sure the organisers raise a fortune. The Motion Picture Academy faces a similar quandary. Without the annual Oscars, how would they keep the lights on for the rest of the year? Reducing art to metrics and market forces doesn’t trouble me. Vast, ugly spectacle does. At the Academy Awards, it’s Frances McDormand not combing her hair and calling it “integrity”. On the Upper East Side in May, it’s Eddie Redmayne in a frilly dressing gown and lavallière, looking every inch a broken man. Playing Stephen Hawking demanded less effort than masking his disinterest at being there.
Can’t you sense that in the coverage? With so many of us living in precarity, it feels like I’m defending Capitol elites from The Hunger Games or the Real Housewives of Gilead. Those poor celebrities, being squeezed into rig-outs they didn’t choose! But their sweaty, self-conscious embarrassment is evident. In the words of the Stoic philosopher, Tina Fey: “It is such a jerk parade. It is so unbelievable. You go into this beautiful space, and it’s just every jerk from every walk of life wearing some stupid thing”.
In 1945, a twentysomething American, Ruth Finley, took out a $1000 loan to create Fashion Calendar. Having apprenticed for two giants in the rag trade, Finley spotted the logistics gap that made a biweekly periodical essential. One was Eleanor Lambert, publicist extraordinaire. The other was Dorothy Shaver, president of Lord & Taylor department stores, the first female in the United States to head a multimillion-dollar corporation. Both were crucial in establishing the Met Gala prototype.
Across the Atlantic, French fashion houses struggled. Fabric shortages, rationing, and war-damaged infrastructure brought teething problems to the “New Look” of Christian Dior. I’m afraid I never bothered with the Apple TV+ series of that name from last year, although I trust Glenn Close’s performance as Marshal Pétain was highly admired. Paris ultimately re-emerged as the couture capital, but four years of isolated occupation led maverick American businesswomen – such as Dublin-born Carmel Snow, who Glennie really portrayed – to import and refine French ideas. Namely, a centralised, interconnected industry.
As Eleanor Lambert’s all-purpose Girl Friday, Ruth Finley cursed the spotty promotion and overlaps that plagued beauty events. Within three years, her venture proved so successful that she hired two employees and moved Fashion Calendar to a small office. Using an analog photocopier, they produced the missives themselves. Always in typewriter font on pink paper, with an eye-catching red cover. What’s more, they refused advertising. The magazine, which Finley grew into the “bible of New York fashion”, remained impartial for the next seventy years – until her death in 2018, shy of her 100th birthday.
Oh, to have such scruples! Her former bosses, Lambert and Shaver, never shied from passing round the hat. Weekend badminton partners, they shared a mutual labour of love in the Costume Institute. Born when Irene Lewisohn’s Museum of Costume Art merged with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with one stipulation: that the late German-Jewish philanthropist’s collection be self-financing. Permanent storage had to be found for some 10,000 pieces. Lambert used her public relations expertise to secure donors and generate interest. Shaver leveraged her position as Life magazine’s “No. 1 American career woman” to champion domestic creatives.
Thus, the “Costume Institute Benefit” was born. The primary revenue source for housing the collection. It was a modest affair in its infancy – early attendees left sundry Manhattan locales with perhaps a goodie bag or a photo with Richard Avedon. But by 1964, it settled into its forever home on Fifth Avenue, replete with red carpet and rising media spotlight. The gala’s recognisable format took shape under Mrs. Vreeland’s stewardship in the 1970s. A blueprint Dame Anna, with her Anton Chigurh bob and Chanel sunglasses, placed on steroids. A grotesque confluence of unbridled neoliberal capitalism and public scrutiny. Predictably, my morality (call me Red Mark) recedes when Glenn or Andrew Scott or another beloved child star is in attendance.
The Wintour of Our Discontent, beginning in 1995, feels depressingly close. Even if Dame Anna’s reign is now thirty years old. The same age Tennessee Williams envisioned Blanche DuBois in Streetcar. Like her, I want magic, not realism.
I will always trade the dreary present for a comforting, though flawed, past.
For further reading, I refer you to Jonathan Conlin’s 2024 tome, The Met: A History of a Museum and Its People.
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This is the only Met Gala content that I desire! Would be curious to know your take on this year's theme, tho.