The Met Gala: How a $50 Midnight Supper Became Fashion’s $100,000 Night

Today, every year on the first Monday in May, the Fifth Avenue steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York face the cameras of the world’s press. Clothes that designers made for that one night, invited actors, singers, and athletes, and the nickname “fashion’s biggest night.” That is how the Met Gala is remembered today. In 2026, a single ticket to sit at this event cost 100,000 dollars. Yet the event began in 1948 as a midnight supper that charged 50 dollars a ticket. In nominal terms, that is a 2,000-fold rise. What changed along the way, and what stayed the same? [1, 7]

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1948: A Midnight Supper That Began Outside the Museum

The Met Gala’s formal name is the Costume Institute Benefit. It is a fundraiser for the Costume Institute, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s department of dress. The first event, in 1948, was a midnight supper that invited guests could attend by buying a 50-dollar ticket. It was conceived by the fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert, who dubbed it the “Party of the Year.” [1]

Lambert did not create it alone. Encyclopaedia Britannica names Dorothy Shaver, president of the New York department store Lord & Taylor, as a co-organizer of the first supper. [2]

The early suppers looked very different from today’s gala. They were held not in spring but in November or December, and not at the museum. From 1948 to 1971 the event moved among Manhattan society venues such as the Waldorf Astoria hotel, the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center, and Central Park. Most guests came from New York high society and the fashion trade, and the entertainment included skits, raffles, and a pageant in which models wore historical costumes from the Costume Institute’s collection. Each year’s party had a theme, but it did not necessarily match the museum’s exhibition that year. [2, 3]

Why a Fundraising Dinner?

The Costume Institute’s roots lie in the Museum of Costume Art, which Irene Lewisohn opened on Fifth Avenue in 1937. The theater costume designer Aline Bernstein served as its first president. After Lewisohn died in 1944, Dorothy Shaver took on the task of bringing the collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Shaver believed the move would strengthen the American fashion industry, and she raised 350,000 dollars from New York garment manufacturers to pay for it. The Museum of Costume Art joined the Met in 1946 and became the Costume Institute. [4]

Moving into the museum did not settle its finances. The Costume Institute is the only curatorial department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that must raise its own operating funds. The Met Gala was created to pay for the department’s work, and it remains the most important source of money for its exhibitions, acquisitions, and capital improvements. That is why it is a fundraiser before it is a glamorous party. [1, 2, 7]

Diana Vreeland Pairs the Party With the Exhibition

The turning point came in the 1970s. Diana Vreeland, who had left her post as editor of Vogue, became special consultant to the Costume Institute in 1972. From that year the gala was held inside the museum. Guests dined and danced in different parts of the building, and several galleries stayed open during the party so that guests could tour the exhibitions. [1, 2]

Vreeland’s biggest change was matching the party’s theme to that year’s exhibition. The gala for “The World of Balenciaga” in March 1973 is counted as the starting point. A ticket cost 85 dollars. Vreeland added opulent touches, such as having a theme-related perfume pumped into the galleries, and celebrities such as Andy Warhol, Diana Ross, and Cher began to appear on the guest list. [2, 3]

This pairing of exhibition and party continues today. “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” in 2011, “Punk: Chaos to Couture” in 2013, “China: Through the Looking Glass” in 2015, “Heavenly Bodies” in 2018, and “Camp: Notes on Fashion” in 2019 were all names of exhibitions that opened that spring. Each year the gala also serves as the opening celebration for that exhibition. [3]

Anna Wintour Turns the Dinner Into a Global Event

In 1995, Vogue editor Anna Wintour became co-chair of the gala. Her first was the “Haute Couture” gala that December, with tickets at 1,000 dollars. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wintour has led the gala ever since, except for 1996 and 1998. [1, 3]

The heart of the Wintour era is the guest list. According to Britannica, every guest needs Wintour’s approval in addition to paying for a ticket. In a 2017 interview, Vogue’s event organizer explained that they aimed to keep the guest count at around 500 for an intimate atmosphere, and described the largest year, 800 guests, as too big. The guest list has spread beyond fashion, film, and music to sports, business, and social media figures. It was around this time that the event came to be called “the Oscars of the East Coast.” [2, 5]

Wintour’s name is also on the museum building. When the Costume Institute’s space reopened in 2014, it was named the Anna Wintour Costume Center in recognition of her long leadership of the gala’s fundraising. [4]

The First Monday in May and a Bigger Event

Even the date that symbolizes the Met Gala was not fixed from the start. Through the 1990s the gala was usually held in late November or early December. After the chief curator Richard Martin died in November 1999, the Chanel exhibition and gala planned for the following year were canceled, and from 2001 to 2004 (except 2002) the event was held in late April. The first Monday in May took hold in 2005, with the Chanel exhibition. [3, 5]

Ticket prices climbed steeply over these years. An individual ticket that cost 7,500 dollars in 2009 rose to 35,000 dollars in 2019, 50,000 dollars in 2023, and 75,000 dollars in 2024, before reaching 100,000 dollars in 2026. A single table cost 350,000 dollars. [3, 7]

Fundraising grew as well. The total of about 9 million dollars in 2013 reached a then-record 31 million dollars in 2025, and in 2026 it set a new record of about 42 million dollars. These figures, however, were made public through the press and museum officials, and they have not been checked here against any audited report. [3, 6, 7]

The gala has not been held every single year. It did not take place in 1957; in 2000 it was canceled after the curator’s death mentioned above, and in 2002 out of respect for recovery efforts after the September 11 attacks. In 2020 it could not be held because of COVID-19, and in 2021 it was moved to September. The 2026 gala took place on May 4 alongside the exhibition “Costume Art,” with the dress code “Fashion Is Art.” That night the museum also unveiled the Condé M. Nast Galleries, the Costume Institute’s new exhibition space. [3, 7]

“Fashion’s Biggest Night,” Built in Three Layers

In short, today’s Met Gala is built in three layers: the fundraising supper that Lambert and Shaver began in 1948, the pairing with exhibitions that Vreeland added in the 1970s, and the global event that Wintour has grown since 1995.

One thing has not changed. From the beginning to today, it has been a fundraiser for the Costume Institute. The 350,000 dollars that Shaver raised from garment makers brought a costume collection into the museum in 1946; eighty years later, in 2026, the same nominal sum was the price of a single gala table. [4, 7] Behind the glamorous nickname “fashion’s biggest night” lies the old, practical need of one museum department to preserve clothing as art. And from the perspective GLU holds, beneath that lies an older fact still: that human beings were made to build things and to make them beautiful.

If you are curious about textiles in the same museum’s collection, see also How Does Tapestry Paint Pictures with Thread?

References

1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art — The Met Gala: From Midnight Suppers to Superheroes and Rihanna
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Met Gala
3. Wikipedia — Met Gala (including the timeline of themes and ticket prices)
4. Wikipedia — Anna Wintour Costume Center
5. E! News — Behind the “first Monday in May” date and how the gala is run
6. E! News — The 2025 Met Gala’s 31 million dollars in fundraising
7. Fortune — The 2026 Met Gala’s 42 million dollars raised, and its ticket and table prices

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