If you saw any photos of familiar celebrities on the red carpet decked out in artistic designs of nature in the form of an outfit, you were likely to have seen photographs from this year’s MET Gala. The Met Gala is a charity event and fundraiser that happens every year on the first Monday of May, held for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York City (Vogue). Actors, singers, models, directors, designers; even politicians are invited to this prestigious event as a means to not only encourage donations from high society, but also for celebrities and designers alike to show off their iconic looks and state-of-the-art fashion skills. 

“The 2024 Met Gala celebrated the Costume Institute’s new exhibition, ‘Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,’” with the theme of, “The Garden of Time” (Vogue). The theme was directly inspired by a 1962 short story written by J.G. Ballard, which centers around a metaphor of, “…the evolution of human history and the endless cycle of creation and destruction” (Cosmopolitan). This means that the fashion pieces we saw on the sixth was spanning over 400 years of history, emphasizing, “…the natural world, its fragility, and its inevitable decay” (Vogue). This is why the looks we saw that night resembled interpretations of florals, botanicals, time, and vintage pieces. 

Now to go over one or two noteworthy looks of the night, we cannot go without discussing Zendaya. Zendaya came out with two looks; the first being vintage Givenchy and the second being Maison Margiela by John Galliano (Vogue). The first was an impactful, trailing, black dress; she paid homage to the theme by wearing a bodice with bell-shaped sleeves and a neckline resembling dresses from the 19th century, along with a striking hat packed with roses ranging colors of pink and yellow. Her second look had a more mystifying atmosphere to it. Her dress was colors of metallic gray and blue with the tulle bottom giving an illusion-esque effect with stripes of dark blue going across. Of course, she referenced the theme with vines of grapes trailing her body.

Another up-and-coming star who undeniably made it on the best-dressed list this year would be Tyla. She wore a sensational dress by Balmain; she transformed herself into a literal sand sculpture with a dress made of sand-like material tightly fitted to her body with a bottom resembling a pool of sand (Vogue). She dusted herself with shiny specks of sand across her arms, holding an hourglass; Dhyani Balsara (11) comments on this saying, “I was impressed as to what technology allowed for the creation of Tyla’s dress. It’s fascinating how fashion technology advances.”

The MET Gala is certainly an event fashion-aficionados and occasional enjoyers of pop culture alike look forward to in the month of May. The world of fashion progresses and some celebrities manage to make a statement on the state of the world or draw attention to topics in need of discussion just through fashion pieces alone. If you missed this year’s gala and all its additional features (interviews, the design process, etc.) fear not, for it will return next year on the first of May.