Like every year before it, the lead up to Fashion Christmas the 2024 Met Gala was rife with speculation. Everything from the guest list to the theme, to how said guest list would interpret said theme has been up for debate. Now, finally, the first Monday in May is upon us and all of our questions have been answered, care of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s sprawling staircase.

The theme for this year’s Met Gala is ‘Garden of Time’, and like previous years, it’s a celebration of the Costume Institute’s annual spring exhibition, which this year is ‘Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’. The exhibition (which opens later this week, on May 10) will span 400 years of fashion history and includes roughly 15 historically significant and ultra-rare pieces that are too delicate to be worn again — and these are the sleeping beauties the exhibition is named after (apologies to any Disney fans). Perhaps the most spoken-about piece in the exhibition is an evening cloak worn by Charles Frederick Worth in the 1800s, called ‘Tulipes Hollandaises’, and hints to a darker and moodier take on florals in spring (which might actually be… groundbreaking).

Early predictions from what we expected from the red carpet suggested more than one interpretation of the theme, which is customary of the event. Some said a literal interpretation of ‘time’ might see celebrities wearing entire dresses made from vintage watch faces or embracing a clock motif — and while the latter was true of one or two attendees, ‘sands of time’ was a more abstract take on the ‘time’ aspect of the theme. Other predictions included gowns adorned with real, live, growing flowers and foliage, which didn’t eventuate, and crystalline looks inspired by J.G Ballard’s 1962 short story, also titled The Garden of Time, which did. And of course, the expectation of florals, florals, and more florals turned out to be correct.

Loewe is also an official supporter of the exhibition at The Met, and with the House’s creative director Jonathan Anderson being named as an honorary chair of the Met Gala this year, we saw quite a bit of Loewe on the carpet as expected. Though there were no oversized anthuriums, we did see hand-beaded and embroidered designs from the Autumn/Winter 2024 show on the carpet.

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