In order to understand the Met Gala, a charity fundraiser held to benefit the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, and to celebrate the newest fashion-related exhibition each year, you need to know who Eleanor Lambert is. This main character was a fashion publicist who along with founding NYC fashion week, decided to hold the very first Met Gala in 1948 as a way to raise money for the museum’s newly-founded Costume Institute and mark the beginning of its annual exhibit.
Diana Vreeland, another pioneer in the world of fashion, and Editor-in-Chief for Vogue, joined the ranks in 1972 as a consultant to the Costume Institute. This is when the Gala started to introduce themes, invite the who’s who of Hollywood and actually take place on Fifth Avenue at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Up until then the gala had taken place at the Waldorf-Astoria, Central Park, and the Rainbow Room. In 1995, a few years after the passing of Diana Vreeland, the infamous Anna Wintour (think Devil Wears Prada, a film loosely based on her) took over the title of chairwoman of the Met Gala.
As Cydney Contreras from E! online describes in her May 01, 2020 article, the history of the Met Gala can be divided into three eras: Eleanor Lambert‘s founding, the Diana Vreeland renaissance and the Anna Wintour empire.
