The Met Gala 2023

Gisele Bündchen attends The 2023 Met Gala Celebrating "Karl Lagerfeld: A Line Of Beauty" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 1, in New York City.

Gisele Bündchen, who worked with Karl Lagerfeld several times on Chanel campaigns, brought back one of those dresses to the Met Gala carpet.

Bündchen told La La Anthony during Vogue’s live stream from the event’s white carpet she first wore the vintage white Chanel dress with its feathery, floor-length cape in 2006 or 2007 for an editorial she did with Lagerfeld.

The model said when she was trying to decide on what to wear to the Met Gala she thought “this is the one.”

Bündchen recalled other memories of working with Chanel, telling a story about shooting a campaign barefoot on the streets of Paris.

Designs by Karl Lagerfeld are displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute exhibition, "Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty," in New York on April 29, 2023.

Celebrated tonight at the Met Gala will be the opening of the Costume Institute’s exhibition “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” curated by the Institute’s Andrew Bolton.

In a space designed by world-renowned Japanese architect Tadao Ando, who first met Lagerfeld in 1996, the show spotlights Lagerfeld’s unique “stylistic vocabulary as it was expressed in ‘through lines’ — aesthetic and conceptual themes that appear time and again — in his fashions from the 1950s to his final collection in 2019,” according to a news release.

Dark sunglasses, leather gloves, a pleated fan: Key parts of Karl Lagerfeld's personal aesthetic — which the designer curated as carefully as his collections — are displayed during the 2023 press preview of the Costume Institute's exhibition, "Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty," on May 1, 2023.

With more than 200 objects on display — some paired with Lagerfeld’s original sketches — the exhibition highlights the designer’s creative process and collaborative relationships with “seamstresses regarded as the architects of Lagerfeld’s vision,” according to the news release. Introductory galleries explore the early chapters of Lagerfeld’s career, during which he designed and worked for the French fashion houses of Pierre Balmain and Patou, respectively. Video interviews conducted by French filmmaker Loïc Prigent, who documented the designer’s work from 1997 to 2019, include footage of Lagerfeld’s collections from Chanel, Chloé, Fendi and his eponymous label.

Looks designed by Karl Lagerfeld on display during the press preview of the Costume Institute's exhibition, "Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty," on May 1, 2023.

Subsequent sections of the exhibition showcase “the serpentine line and the straight line, which designate opposing yet complementary forces in his work,” according to the news release. “The serpentine line signifies Lagerfeld’s historicist, romantic, and decorative impulses, while the straight line indicates his modernist, classicist, and minimalist tendencies.”

The final gallery, designed like an ellipse, features never-before-seen archival footage of Lagerfeld displayed across 81 iPhones, “a nod to the designer’s primary mode of creativity and communication,” according to the news release.

The exhibition will be open for public viewing May 5 through July 16, 2023.

Roger Federer arrives at the Met Gala on May 1 in New York City.

Tennis star Roger Federer is honoring Karl Lagerfeld and the theme of tonight’s Met Gala with the details.

Federer said his interpretation of the theme was to stick to the classics, with added meaning on the inside. The lining of his Dior jacket featured sketches by Kim Jones, honoring Lagerfeld’s preferred creative method.

Federer shows the inside of his Met Gala jacket.

Nicole Kidman attends The 2023 Met Gala Celebrating "Karl Lagerfeld: A Line Of Beauty" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 1, in New York City.

At tonight’s Met Gala, Nicole Kidman is re-wearing a Karl Lagerfeld-designed gown she donned in a famous 2004 Chanel Nº5 commercial. (The ad was directed by Baz Luhrmann, who is also attending the event and wearing Thom Browne.)

The commercial depicts Kidman as a Hollywood star desperately trying to escape paparazzi, running from a red carpet in the gown before escaping the scene entirely in a cab with costar Rodrigo Santoro.

In a dusty pink, the gown’s bodice — laden with pink and white beads, crystals and silver sequins — gracefully gradates into a long feathery train. Kidman offset the gown with a pink tulle veil draped off her shoulders and further playing with the look’s proportions.

“To be able to honor him and wear this dress now … to be able to wear the same thing 20 years later and it still holds — there’s whimsy to it and it’s light as a feather,” Kidman told La La Anthony during Vogue’s livestream from the event’s white carpet. “It’s couture.”

Karl Lagerfeld and Jared Leto pose backstage after Chanel's Fall-Winter 2014 Haute Couture Show in Paris on July 8, 2014.

Jared Leto will produce and star in a biopic of Karl Lagerfeld, Women’s Wear Daily reported in October 2022. 

The Oscar winner said he thinks the late fashion designer and former artistic director of Chanel would be proud.

“I feel like this is a full-circle moment, and Karl would be proud of what we are doing,” Leto told the publication. “Karl was an artist. Period. He was a fashion designer, he was a photographer, he was an artist. There was no defining him. He was a creative powerhouse.”   

The project does “come with the backing of the Karl Lagerfeld fashion house,” and it is set to detail Lagerfeld’s life and relationships, according to Women’s Wear Daily’s report. 

Leto added: “My role is to portray him on screen as honestly as possible.” 

“Karl was a human being. We all have beauty within us and we all have faults. We have masks and then we have moments when we reveal the mask. I’m always interested in seeing what’s behind the mask,” he said. 

Anna Wintour attends the 2023 Met Gala celebrating the Costume Institute exhibition "Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty," at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 1, in New York City.

Anna Wintour, who has been at the helm of Vogue — fashion’s most influential magazine — since 1988, is a household name not just in the industry, but across society at large.

She’s been the subject of documentaries and the inspiration for movies, as talked about as the celebrities she’s put on her covers (rumors she was about to leave Vogue back in 2018 fueled a flurry of wild speculation online) and as immediately recognizable, thanks to her power bob and ever-present sunglasses. 

“The amazing thing about Anna is the average person knows who she is,” designer Tom Ford told fashion journalist Amy Odell in the first pages of “Anna,” a recent biography of Wintour. “You show them a picture and they say, ‘That’s Anna Wintour from Vogue.’” 

Wintour is “militant” in her planning of the Met Gala, Odell wrote, for which she oversees every detail, including the guest list — “you just can’t buy your way into it,” Odell said — and the menu. She’s banned chives, garlic, onion and parsley.

(Wintour has a habit of not learning the names of the people who work under her, including her assistants and some of the museum staff.) 

Choupette appears in photographs staged during the "Corsa Karl and Choupette" exhibition — a showcase of images from the 2015 Corsa Calendar, which Karl Lagerfeld shot — at the Palazzo Italia in Berlin on February 3, 2015.

This year’s most anticipated Met Gala guest has revealed she won’t be attending.

It’s Choupette (that’s French for “Sweetie”), Karl Lagerfeld’s 11-year-old blue cream Birman, who was the designer’s pet, muse and best friend. 

Rumors of the fashion aristo-cat’s attendance began as soon as the gala’s theme was announced last year. However, Choupette had been playing a game of cat and mouse with her 154,000 Instagram followers — a recent post included a video of her waking up from a catnap with the caption, “Me, while everyone is wondering if I’m going to the Met Gala.” 

The New York Post reported last month that Choupette had been invited to the event, but her agent did not reveal whether she would accept.

Choupette also recently appeared on the May cover of Vogue, cradled in the arms supermodel Naomi Campbell on a Parisian bridge.

Speculation intensified on Thursday when Kim Kardashian shared Instagram snaps of a trip to the French capital, including a photoshoot with the celebrity feline. 

Born in 2011, Choupette was originally owned by French model Baptiste Giabiconi, a close friend of Lagerfeld’s. Giabiconi gave the cat to the designer as a birthday gift. 

Soon Choupette was living the high life, with trips on private jets, appearances at exclusive parties and magazine shoots. Choupette traveled in a custom carrying case with her silver dishes and brushes in their own Goyard bag. (She was also reported to be the inspiration for a line of cat face handbags created by Chanel.)

Her life of luxury continued even after her human’s death in 2019. Often seen in luxury hotels and villas, Choupette celebrated her birthday last August in true supermodel style, appearing in a photo taken on a (grounded) private jet with a bottle of Ruinart champagne, a souffle and a bag of gifts.

Lagerfeld arrives for the launch of a Chanel mobile art exhibition in Hong Kong in March 2008.

Beyond his visionary designs and elaborate runway shows, Karl Lagerfeld was also known for contentious remarks that frequently landed him in hot water.

The designer, a self-described “caricature,” was blunt and unapologetic and had a lot to say about the political and societal issues of the moment, including the #MeToo movement.

Here are some of his most controversial — and widely criticized — comments: 

On the #MeToo movement:

On the debate surrounding thin models:

On sweatpants:

On the fur debate in fashion:

Members of the media flank the off-white carpet at the 2023 Met Gala, celebrating the Costume Institute exhibition "Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty," at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 1, in New York City.

Ahead of tonight’s 2023 Met Gala, the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art are carpeted in a creamy white with streaks of pastel blue and red. Though designed to fit this year’s theme, and the Costume Institute’s exhibition “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” the color scheme has reminded some of, well, toothpaste. 

Flanking the carpet is an ornate backdrop that resembles Baroque wallpaper and paneling— reminiscent of the interiors of a luxe French chateau — while several ornate chandeliers hang from the draped ceiling.

The Met Gala’s organizers have put a spin on the traditional red carpet based on a theme before:

At last year’s “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” event, the carpet was striped in subtle shades of red, white and blue.

For 2019’s “Camp: Notes on Fashion” theme, celebrities walked a ballerina-pink carpet, and in 2018, to fit the medieval-inspired theme of “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” the steps were carpeted in a richly patterned beige and trimmed in maroon.

This year’s Met Gala red carpet is expected to be a star-studded event.

Some of the biggest names in Hollywood from hit shows and movies this year will be making an appearance, including Pedro Pascal, Jenna Ortega and Quinta Brunson.

Sydney Sweeney, whose upcoming romantic comedy “Anyone But You” has been creating buzz online, is expected to strut the red carpet, along with upcoming “Barbie” star Margot Robbie.

Musicians including Bad Bunny, Lil Nas X, Dua Lipa and Olivia Rodrigo are also on the guest list.

This year, the dress code is “In honor of Karl,” a tribute to Karl Lagerfeld, the late fashion juggernaut with an indelible influence but controversial reputation. All eyes will be on the red carpet to see how guests interpret Lagerfeld’s complicated legacy

While Karl Lagerfeld will always be remembered for turning Chanel into the iconic brand it is today, it’s important to note his legacy outside the realm of fashion.

Lagerfeld’s recognition was arguably the ultimate stamp of high-fashion approval; if you could work with Karl, you could work with anyone. His reach as kingmaker spanned decades, ages and industries — it was as if everything he touched turned to gold.

His sphere of influence extended to areas such as branding, photography and filmmaking. Once quoted as saying that people must “embrace the present and invent the future,” his boundary-pushing collaborations were also ahead of their time.

Perhaps most memorably, Lagerfeld was responsible for the first of H&M’s now hugely popular designer collaboration series back in 2004.

Based on the success of this first capsule collection, which sold out in minutes, Lagerfeld went on to collaborate with watchmaker Fossil, the department store Macy’s, makeup brand Shu Uemura and even beverage giant Coca-Cola in the following years — offering more affordable and accessible ways to purchase his creations in the process. There’s even a Karl Lagerfeld Barbie doll based on the designer’s iconic style.

And just as he pushed the fashion industry to work with other sectors, Lagerfeld wanted runway shows to be about more than just clothing. It’s now commonplace for labels to provide audiences with memorable, or better yet, shareable experiences. But before the days of Instagram, Lagerfeld was well ahead of other designers in creating cinematic sets and headline-worthy moments.

The themed shows from his tenure at Chanel have all been photo-worthy, including the larger-than-life carousel built in Paris’s Grand Palais for the brand’s Fall/Winter 2008 collection, as well as more recent, over-the-top themes like a Chanel grocery store, airport terminal and even a space station, complete with a life-size rocket ship.

Beyond designing, Lagerfeld also had a hand in photography, shooting numerous campaigns for Chanel and others. He directed a short film starring Keira Knightley and even took a voice part in a French animated movie. He was also known for his love of books and for setting up his own publishing imprint.

Vogue's former editor at large Andre Leon Talley and Anna Wintour attend the Met Gala on December 6, 1999.

While red carpet photos of the Met Gala have become instantly accessible, and often iconic, documentation of the splashy event has changed in recent years, as photographers have largely been limited to snapping attendees’ highly posed entrances. To see celebrities letting loose (the likes of Bella Hadid and Marc Jacobs gathering in the bathroom for smoking breaks, for example), you’d have to turn to after-party photos or their Instagram feeds. 

Images from the galas of yesteryear are enticing because of their nostalgia factor and retro styling, but they also reveal a more relaxed atmosphere.

Rose Hartman, who photographed the gala for decades until the early 2000s, recalled over the phone a time when there was more freedom to move around and engage with attendees.

“They were just so happily speaking to one another rather than posing,” Hartman told CNN in 2020 of the glitzy guests. “I always try whenever possible to capture people who are engaged with one another.”

Ron Galella, who has photographed the event since 1967, had a system in place to grab the best shots, from arrivals at coat check to the museum floor and dinner. “It was easy to shoot inside,” he wrote via e-mail in 2020. “A New York Press card was all you needed to gain entry.” (When press passes eventually became limited, there were years he smuggled himself in through the employee entrance.)

In 1999, Anna Wintour’s first year as chair of the event, Hartman snapped a photograph of the Vogue editor-in-chief walking in with former editor-at-large André Leon Talley, who died in 2022. The image of them is joyful, with both editors resplendent in costume and caught in motion.

“I love the fact that they are walking rather than standing,” Hartman said. “I love the gesture of their movement.”

Galella’s vast archive of Met Gala images, which he published in a book in 2019, also shows endearing gestures between celebrities who weren’t anticipating the flash of a camera. He believes it’s a universal feeling to want to see the entertainment and fashion elite let their guards down.

Click through to see more candid photos of celebrities at the Met Gala.

Clockwise from top left: Roger Federer, Michaela Coel, Dua Lipa and Penélope Cruz.

Singer Dua Lipa, tennis star Roger Federer, and actors Penélope Cruz and Michaela Coel will join Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour as co-chairs of the 2023 Met Gala.   

The annual event coincides with a major new exhibition about the life and work of fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, who died in 2019. Attendees have been asked to dress in accordance with the theme “In honor of Karl.” 

The four co-chairs, all of whom have attended the fundraiser in recent years, took to social media when their participation was announced. Federer wrote on Instagram that he was “so excited” to join his “dear friend” Wintour at the event. Cruz, who walked the runway at Lagerfeld’s last Chanel show, meanwhile posted the news alongside the caption “Karl” and a heart emoji. 

This year will mark one of the few occasions since Wintour began overseeing the event in the mid-1990s on which no fashion designers are among the chairs. While appointees from the past two years have hailed from other industries (last year’s co-chair lineup included Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Regina King), American designer Tom Ford served as honorary chair in both 2021 and 2022. 

Former Vogue editor Diana Vreeland and fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent attend the 1983 Met Gala, celebrating the Costume Institute's exhibition "Yves Saint Laurent: 25 Years of Design."

On the first Monday in May, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art opens its doors for the Met Gala, an annual fundraiser to benefit the museum’s Costume Institute, and a launch party for its spring exhibition. 

The Costume Institute is the only curatorial department at the Met that has to finance its own activities. The gala is its biggest fundraiser. The event was initially named the Party of the Year, but it’s only relatively recently that it fulfilled that promise. 

From 1948 to 1971, the benefit wasn’t pegged to an exhibition and was held off-site at the Waldorf Astoria or the Rainbow Room. Guests indulged in fine dining and were entertained by “skits, raffles, and pageants of models in historic costume,” according to the museum’s records. 

Former Vogue editor Diana Vreeland brought new glamor to the Costume Institute when she joined as a consultant in 1972. Vreeland curated some of the most ambitious exhibitions in its history and used the gala as an opportunity to inaugurate them, with designers and fashion industry insiders turning out in full force. 

Anna Wintour, Vogue’s current editor, shifted the focus to celebrities when she took over as chairwoman in 1999, recruiting A-list co-chairs and through the years inviting stars such as Lil’ Kim and Kim Kardashian to attract more attention to the event.

Lagerfeld pictured in Chanel's Parisian studio on March 5, 1984, a year after he joined the storied fashion brand.

You don’t have to know anything about fashion to have heard of iconic designer Karl Lagerfeld, who helmed luxury fashion house Chanel for more than three decades.

As with his designs, he carefully crafted his own image by blending past and present: Snowy white mane and ponytail like a powdered 18th-century periwig; aviator sunglasses; a high, starched white collar; black, fingerless biker gloves worn with multiple silver rings.

(Of course, he was a celebrity for so long that we forget that he changed that image more than once. In a striking Helmut Newton portrait from the early 1970s, his hair is jet black, he has a thick, piratical beard and sports a rimless monocle. For almost 20 years, he was seldom seen without a Japanese fan, swiftly spread and fluttered for photographers. Like artist Andy Warhol, Lagerfeld had an instinct about his own image.)

Lagerfeld was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1933. In later life, he would be coy about his date of birth, usually trimming at least five years off of his age.

In the early 1950s, he saw his first fashion shows in Hamburg, including one by Christian Dior. With his mother’s encouragement, he decided to leave Hamburg for fashionable Paris. In 1954, he won a womenswear design competition and joined the haute couture house of Pierre Balmain. Three years later, he moved to the House of Patou. After that, he began freelancing for Chloé, and by 1967 counted Fendi among his clients.

His decision to accept an offer to be artistic director at Chanel in 1983 elevated him to an infinitely higher fashion sphere, and transformed both his and the brand’s fortunes. “When I took on Chanel, it was a sleeping beauty. Not even a beautiful one. She snored,” he said in “Lagerfeld Confidential,” a 2007 documentary. “So I was to revive a dead woman.”

Lagerfeld acknowledged the brand’s history but treated it irreverently. To survive “you have to cut the roots to make new roots,” he told the New Yorker. “Because fashion is about today. You can take an idea from the past, but, if you do it the way it was, no one wants it.”

Read more about how Lagerfeld redefined fashion.

Models including Cara Delevingne (second from left) walk in the emotional finale of the Chanel Fall-Winter 2019 show during Paris Fashion Week on March 5, 2019.

Just a few weeks after the designer’s death, French fashion house Chanel paid tribute to Karl Lagerfeld at Paris Fashion Week on March 5, 2019.

An illustrated card left on each seat for guests at the Fall-Winter 2019 show featured a drawing of Lagerfeld with Chanel founder Coco Chanel, with the words “The beat goes on…” written above their heads.

The show itself started with a minute of silence. Then, Lagerfeld’s voice echoed through the venue, musing about how he renewed Chanel’s desirability, and sharing early memories of his time at the brand.

The collection was designed in collaboration with Lagerfeld’s successor, Virginie Viard. Models, including Lagerfeld favorites Cara Delevingne and Kaia Gerber, showed a parade of the brand’s signatures, with plenty of blown-up tweeds, houndstooth prints in a variety of colors, and pearl accessories.

The prevailing silhouette was oversized, with billowing trousers, long coats, puffer jackets, and dramatic lapels, accessorized with furry winter boots. Amid the mostly dark color palette was a stream of delicate all-white looks, including a feather mini skirt modeled by Penelope Cruz.

The show culminated with a tearful, extended standing ovation, as models walked down the runway to David Bowie’s “Heroes.” No one emerged from backstage to give a final bow.

Lagerfeld’s other luxury labels have also paid tribute to the designer in recent weeks. At Milan Fashion Week, Fendi, the Italian brand where Lagerfeld served as artistic director for 54 years, closed its Autumn-Winter 2019 show with a segment of the 2013 documentary “Karl Lagerfeld Sketches His Life,” in which he sketched and described what he wore on his first day at the brand.

Chloé, the French house he helmed first between 1963 and 1983, and again from 1992 to 1997, provided guests with postcards featuring images and quotes from Lagerfeld’s tenure.

“His joyous capturing of the spirit of the Chloé woman is eternally treasured by us, and by everyone who felt the freedom and beauty of wearing his clothes,” the show notes read.

From left: A wedding dress from Chanel's 2005 Fall-Winter Haute Couture collection; a sketch of the dress.

This year’s Met Gala will invite attendees to honor the work of German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, who died in 2019 at age 85. 

The gala’s theme coincides with a major exhibition at the Met’s Costume Institute, titled “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty.” The show brings together around 150 designs that “explore the designer’s stylistic language,” the Met noted in a news release. Items on display will include creations from Lagerfeld’s time as creative director of Fendi, Chloé and Chanel, as well as pieces from his stints at Balmain and Patou and designs from his eponymous label. 

Lagerfeld was a prolific sketcher, and most of the items going on display will be accompanied by corresponding drawings. The Institute’s head curator, Andrew Bolton, said he had been inspired by hearing Lagerfeld’s design assistants — or the “hidden hands behind Karl’s brilliance,” as he put it — pay tribute at a memorial service. 

“I was so fascinated by how they communicated (with Lagerfeld), which was by drawings,” Bolton told CNN shortly after the announcement. 

Bolton, who is also authoring an accompanying book, said the late designer “would have hated a retrospective,” but the exhibition will be more akin to an “essay” about his work.