"Florals? For spring? Groundbreaking."—one can imagine Anna Wintour herself uttering those words as a throng of floral-clad outfits paraded themselves in, one after another, into the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was the first Monday in May, also known as the Met Gala, and Wintour assumed her longtime role as co-chair. She was joined by Met Gala 2024 co-chairs Jennifer Lopez, Zendaya, Chris Hemsworth, and Bad Bunny. Honorary chairs for this year's edition were Loewe's Jonathan Anderson, and Shou Chew, chief executive of TikTok.
The annual benefit celebrated the opening of the latest seasonal exhibition, Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, where around 250 objects spanning four decades are on display. Each fashion object features a relation to nature, serving as a metaphor for the fragility and ephemerality of fashion. As an extension of this time travel of fashion through a nature-centric lens, the theme of Met Gala 2024 was "The Garden of Time". While the title immediately conjures up images of flora and fauna, in actuality, it's quite a broad theme.
"The Garden of Time" is a reference to a 1962 short story of the same name by J.G. Ballard. It tells a story of Count Axel and his wife live in a villa surrounded by a garden of crystal, time flowers. In order to escape an approaching angry mob, the count began plucking off the flowers one by one to travel back in time, until there were none left and they both succumbed to their inevitable downfall.
Yes, it is somewhat of an irony that the story's narrative inspired the dress code for this year's Met Gala—a benefit attended by modern-day aristocrats.
Looking into the source material, the theme leaves room for interpretation. Sure, the florals and anything else garden-related are a given, but manners of aristocratic dress were also options. And due to the time-travelling nature of the story, there's also no fixed period to be restricted by. First-time attendees (and the first K-pop group in history to attend the Met Gala) Stray Kids wore custom Tommy Hilfiger suiting in the brand's signature hues with subtle floral and botanical details, while Barry Keoghan stunned in a velvet Burberry suit that was a nod to period dressing.
Others took on the story's more nuanced theme of doom and destruction. Wisdom Kaye's Robert Wun ensemble was the perfect manifestation of destroyed beauty with its burnt edges; Bad Bunny's Maison Margiela suit featured loose topstitching that were irregularly done; and Dan Levy's Loewe fit beautifully interpreted the theme with a floral suiting that graduated into darkness.
View our picks of the best menswear looks at Met Gala 2024 in the gallery below.
