Having attended the past four Met Galas as a Vogue staffer, it was strange to realize I wouldn’t be returning to the museum this year for the first Monday in May. My feelings of missing the Met Gala go beyond even having the opportunity to attend; I’ll miss being able to personally visit the exhibits, too.
Years before I started as an accessories assistant at Vogue, my mom and I would go to see the Costume Institute exhibits together, and it became a tradition I looked forward to every summer. We’d meet at the uptown 6 train platform at Grand Central, head up to Museum Mile together, press on our Met entrance stickers (and reminisce about the old times, when they used pins), then make our way through the costume exhibit. We’d often check out a few other galleries along the way, typically searching for the Robert Venturi Chippendale chair my mom is certain lives somewhere in the American Wing (spoiler alert, we’ve never been able to find it), then head to the roof for a glass of rosé while we rested what we like to call our “slow museum stroll legs.” The day is not over, however, until we stop at the bookshop on the way out to pick up a copy of the exhibit catalog.
Collecting books has been important to my family since before my time, and the house I grew up in was basically held up by wall-to-wall bookshelves. There were side tables made from overflowing stacks, and every coffee table had a few on display. My own personal collection of Met mementos started the day we visited Punk: Chaos to Couture and has grown each year since, from one volume featuring the remarkable ball gowns of Charles James: Beyond Fashion to the electric and exaggerated Camp: Notes on Fashion.
With museums and cultural institutions closed for now, I am grateful not only that art institutions are giving us access to online exhibits, but that I have these pages to turn to for some much needed escapism, inspiration, and imagination. We are lucky to be able to preview About Time: Fashion & Duration virtually and even pre-order the catalog, but what I really look forward to is picking up the book myself at the Met Store’s physical location, when that time comes. For now, and particularly in the lead-up to Mother’s Day, I’ll be reliving the past seven years of Met Gala exhibits from home through my personal collection of catalogs and memories. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that they look nice on the coffee table, too.
