Vogue announced Monday that the 2022 Met Gala invitations were out and with them the often difficult to decipher, but very important dress code for the event. This year’s gala will be a continuation of the exhibit and theme of the late September 2021 Met Gala In America: A Lexicon of Fashion. Titled In America: An Anthology of Fashion, the dress code is “gilded glamour, white tie.”
In America: An Anthology of Fashion is a highly anticipated exhibit that also marks the return of The Met Gala to its usual spot on the first Monday of May.
“The Costume Institute’s 2022 spring exhibition, In America: An Anthology of Fashion—the second of a two-part presentation—will explore the foundations of American fashion through a series of sartorial displays featuring individual designers and dressmakers who worked in the United States from the 19th to the mid-late 20th century.”
The exhibition will feature approximately 100 examples of men’s and women’s clothing dating from the 19th to the mid-late 20th century with a focus on the stories fashion can tell about American lives “from the personal to the political, the stylistic to the cultural, and the aesthetic to the ideological.”
What does this have to do with Gilded Glamour? Well, the Gilded Age was a period of industrialization and expansion in everything from railroads to skirt sizes (we see you, bell skirts). It also encompasses the Civil War and Reconstruction eras and major cultural issues like prohibition, child labor, women’s suffrage, and the rights of Black Americans were at the front of conversations around the country. The term “Gilded Age” comes from Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today which looked back on the time and the issues masked by the glamour of Victorian Era lifestyles.
We’re expecting to see gold and dramatic details on the red carpet this year. Last year’s “American independence” theme left a lot of room for interpretation from Billie Eilish’s Old Hollywood glam to more obvious stars and stripes looks. With this more focused dress code, we want to see big the 19th century’s magnificent mutton sleeves, Victorian florals, and over-done silhouettes and big hairstyles. There’s also room for the sporty looks and more movable styles from the mid-1900s that would be perfect for dancing down the red carpet. Gilded Glamour should give designers plenty of room for detail where last year’s theme focused so much on color.
With the massive scope of the Gilded Age and the enormous number of major historical events and changes that occurred during that time period, it will also be exciting to see how designers take on these stories and what celebrities walk the carpet to bring them to life.
The 2022 Met Gala red carpet live stream has not been announced yet, but we can likely expect to see the stream starting in the early evening (last year’s red carpet started at 5:30 pm ET) and carrying on through the night on Vogue‘s website and other fashion platforms.
