The Costume Institute’s Met Gala may not have always been a supersized spectacle, but it was always very fashionable. Started in 1948 by Eleanor Lambert, who also founded the International Best Dressed List, the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and even New York Fashion Week, at the start the evening consisted of a very standard dinner in a luxe Manhattan hotel with various socialites in attendance. The seeds of our modern-time Met Gala extravaganza were planted in the early 1970s by Diana Vreeland, who became a consultant for the Costume Institute after her tenure at Vogue and began injecting it with her unique brand of glitz and glamour—and introduced an actual “gala” component—which allowed celebs and members of the jet-set a night of revelry at the museum. Interestingly, it was Pat Buckley, a wealthy socialite and philanthropist who was chairwoman for the Met Gala from 1978 to 1995, who made the evening one of the most important charity events of the New York season. Vogue’s Anna Wintour took over in 1995, turning it into one of the most-talked about events every year.
Ahead of the upcoming Met Gala on May 6 celebrating the opening of “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” we took a deep dive into Met Gala fashions of yore. The Getty archives begin in 1975, when the gala celebrated “American Women of Style,” (naturally, Lee Radziwill was in attendance); back then there were no themed dress codes, and everyone simply wore their most glamorous cocktail or black tie attire. Scroll to see the coolest, most glamorous looks from the Met Gala, beginning in 1975 all the way through 1999.
The 1970s
The Costume Institute exhibits of the 1970s were a classic lineup of some of fashion’s favorite references, including “Diaghilev: Costumes and Designs of the Ballets Russes” in 1978, and “Fashions of the Habsburg Era: Austria-Hungary” in 1979. Studio 54 may have been 30 blocks downtown, but the many of the decade’s Met looks were glitzy enough to make a splash at the legendary club.
The 1980s
Costume Institute shows during the decade of excess appropriately paid homage to La Belle Epoque (1982), Yves Saint Laurent (1983), “The Costumes of Royal India” (1985), and “The Age of Napoleon: Costume from Revolution to Empire” (1989); along with a tribute to Diana Vreeland in 1987, a few years before her passing. But it was the 1981 Met Gala in honor of “The Eighteenth Century Woman,” where people really turned out some iconic looks.
The 1990s
The Costume Institute was in a state of flux after the 1989 passing of Diana Vreeland. In fact, it remained closed for much of 1991 until Harold Martin and Richard Koda were named to the post. Their inaugural exhibition was “Fashion and History: A Dialogue” in 1992, and they followed it with another ode to Diana Vreeland’s “Immoderate Style,” which truly brought out everyone’s most major looks. The decade also saw a Costume Institute tribute to Gianni Versace, whose death in the summer of 1997, before ending with the “Rock Style” exhibition in 1999, a real portender of things to come.
