Met Gala 2024: Costume Institute Reveals Historical, Fantastical ‘Sleeping Beauties’ Theme

Fashion fans should get ready for a spring reawakening!

The theme for the 2024 Met Gala was revealed on Wednesday as “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.”

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition theme — curated and organized by The Costume Institute — will feature 250 items from their permanent collection, and displayed in a new, innovated and unique way.

Max Hollein, CEO of The Met, said in a press statement on Wednesday that the “innovate” exhibition — and the accompanying star-studded annual fundraising gala — will “push the boundaries of our imagination and invite us to experience the multisensory facets of a garment.”

“‘Sleeping Beauties’ will heighten our engagement with these masterpieces of fashion by evoking how they feel, move, sound, smell, and interact when being worn, ultimately offering a deeper appreciation of the integrity, beauty, and artistic brilliance of the works on display,” Hollein shared.

According to the announcement, the exhibition will include garments that span over 400 years, and will be “visually united by iconography related to nature, which will serve as a metaphor for the fragility and ephemerality of fashion.”

“Within each space, historical fashions will be juxtaposed with their contemporary counterparts in an immersive environment intended to engage a visitor’s sense of sight, smell, touch, and hearing,” the press release explains. “The walls of one space will be embossed with the foliate, vegetal, and insectoid embroidery of an Elizabethan bodice; the floors of another will be animated with snakes that frame the neckline of an early 20th-century sequined dress; and the ceiling of another will be projection-mapped with a Hitchcockian swarm of black birds that encircle a black tulle evening dress designed by Madeleine Vionnet just before the outbreak of World War II.”

Additionally, the exhibit will feature a number of the theme’s titular “sleeping beauties,” which are garments that are so fragile that they can no longer be displayed on mannequins.

Instead, these delicate pieces will be displayed in glass “coffins” — evoking the state of repose of Sleeping Beauty herself.

Additionally, these delicate pieces will be “brought back to life by the illusion technique known as Pepper’s ghost,” the announcement revealed. This is the same special projection effect used by many of the ghosts in Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride, employed here to animate gowns no longer able to be worn.

The star-studded Met Gala — also known as the The Costume Institute Benefit — will be held May 6, 2024. Each year, the Met Gala serves as the primary source of funding for the Costume Institute’s operating budget.

For more on the ultra-stylish 2023 Met Gala, check out the video below.

RELATED CONTENT: