The Met Gala, one of the most anticipated and prestigious fashion and fundraising events of the year, is approaching May 6. 

The Met Gala is a fundraising benefit for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that is held the first Monday in May every year and welcomes a wide range of different audiences. The Gala this year will honor the Costume Institute’s new exhibition, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.”

Whether it’s to mock or praise the fashion that the celebrities are wearing, students and professors alike await the event every year.

Liana Boersma, a senior fashion design major, said she looks forward to checking out the different fashions each year.

“Usually I don’t watch the live event, because it is kind of just looking at people walking,” Boersma said. “But I do usually always look at the clothing after, go through slideshows, see what people are wearing and who is designed by who.”

Boersma said that she enjoys seeing the different types of fashion choices and, though the clothing might seem flashy, the Met Gala is the best place to show off those looks.

“I think that of all places, the Met Gala is the place to be gaudy,” Boersma said. “It’s the biggest fashion event outside of the New York Fashion Week or London or Paris, you know? This is their time, these people with all this money, to be able to dress fabulous or crazy.”

The one complaint that Boersma has about the Met Gala is when the celebrities are lazy or don’t follow the theme.

“So many men will show up in a black suit,” Boersma said. “It’s like, yay, you got a black suit that fits, but it doesn’t do more than that. You can wear a black suit for every single event that you have, do something more for a literal fashion event.”

Boersma said that she is excited for the theme of the dress code, “The Garden of Time,” which, according to Boersma, is from a short story written by J.G Ballard. Though Boersma is excited for the fashion, she is also interested in the exhibition this year, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion”.

“I really love historical fashion and looking into the implications of them,” Boersma said. “This is more about the preservation or the conservation of these garments. I think it’s an interesting theme to bring attention to clothing cost, conservation and costume conservation that people don’t think about, because why would you?”

Sara Hume, curator of the Kent State Museum and professor of fashion, said that she has actually been to the Met Gala before as an intern in graduate school.

“It was when they did an exhibit on Jackie Kennedy in 2001,” Hume said. “It was really cool. The Kennedy family was there, it was really big too. It hadn’t quite become quite the public spectacle that it would.”

Hume said that the most important part of the Met Gala, which is often forgotten, is the fundraiser for the Costume Institute.

“It’s a big fundraiser for the museum and it’s an important event,” Hume said. “It’s nice that there’s a high profile for a museum event. It becomes a sort of public spectacle, which is a little curious. But I think it’s great to get people talking about the Met, about the Costume Institute exhibition and to get all those high profile celebrities and stuff involved.”

With this year’s theme being so open-ended, Hume is curious to see what celebrities and influencers are going to interpret it.

“The most logical way to go would be nature themes,” Hume said. “There’s a sort of extended metaphor between natural flowers and things like nature and the seasonality of nature. But I really don’t know how people are going to take such a conceptual theme.”

Destiny Torres is a reporter. Contact her at [email protected].