The article previews the 2025 Met Gala, where celebrities including Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, and Venus Williams will ascend the Metropolitan Museum of Art's steps dressed according to the dress code "Fashion is art." The event, which raises funds for the museum's Costume Institute, encourages guests to treat fashion as an embodied art form, drawing on historical collaborations between designers and artists—such as Elsa Schiaparelli with Salvador Dalí, Yves Saint Laurent with Piet Mondrian, and Marc Jacobs with Takashi Murakami. The red carpet will be livestreamed by Vogue and the Associated Press.
This year's dress code matters because it signals a definitive cultural shift: the Met Gala, under the direction of Anna Wintour and curator Andrew Bolton, is explicitly framing fashion as a legitimate art form. Art historian Nancy Hall-Duncan notes that this official endorsement from the museum world could change long-standing perceptions that separate fashion from fine art. The event also highlights the growing institutional acceptance of fashion exhibitions, following the Met's first fashion show in 1983 and the Louvre's recent "Louvre couture" exhibition.