For every fashinonista, The Costume Institute Benefit, also known, as The Met Gala is the highlight of the year! The event traditionally celebrates The Costume Institute’s spring exhibition and will take place on Monday, May 6thto open Camp: Notes on Fashion (on view from May 9 through September 8, 2019, and preceded on May 6 by The Costume Institute Benefit). The evening’s co-chairs will be Lady Gaga, Alessandro Michele, Harry Styles, Serena Williams, and Anna Wintour. The event is The Costume Institute’s main source of annual funding for exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and capital improvements.

The Met Gala always brings excitement, as you search out your favorite celebs on the red carpet. My favorite Rihanna always shuts it down, so I’m beyond excited to see what she will do with this year’s theme. Many questioned what is camp when the announcement was made of this year’s exhibition, but according to my go-to Merriam Webster’s Dictionary, it can be defined as a style or mode of personal or creative expression that is absurdly exaggerated and often fuses elements of high and popular culture. The exhibition will explore the origin of camp’s exuberant aesthetic and how the sensibility evolved from a place of marginality to become an important influence on mainstream culture. Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp’” provides the framework for the exhibition, which will examine how fashion designers have used their métier as a vehicle to engage with camp in a myriad of compelling, humorous, and sometimes incongruous ways.

Camp: Notes on Fashionwill feature approximately 250 objects, including womenswear and menswear, as well as sculptures, paintings, and drawings dating from the 17th century to the present. The show’s opening section will position Versailles as a “camp Eden” and address the concept of se camper—“to posture boldly”—in the royal courts of Louis XIV and Louis XV. It will then focus on the figure of the dandy as a “camp ideal” and trace camp’s origins to the queer subcultures of Europe and America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In her essay, Sontag defined camp as an aesthetic and outlined its primary characteristics. The largest section of the exhibition will be devoted to how these elements—which include irony, humor, parody, pastiche, artifice, theatricality, and exaggeration—are expressed in fashion.

Designers whose work will be in the exhibition include Virgil Abloh (for Off-White c/o Virgil Abloh); Giorgio Armani (for Armani Privé); Manish Arora; Ashish; Christopher Bailey (for Burberry); Cristóbal Balenciaga; Thom Browne; Sarah Burton (for Alexander McQueen); Jean-Charles de Castelbajac; Antonio del Castillo (for Lanvin-Castillo); Dapper Dan (for Gucci); Christian Dior; Salvatore Ferragamo; John Galliano (for Maison Margiela, House of Dior, and his own label); Jean Paul Gaultier; Nicolas Ghesquière (for Louis Vuitton); Odile Gilbert (for Jean Paul Gaultier); Edda Gimnes and Manuel Vadillo (for EDDA); Molly Goddard; Bertrand Guyon (for House of Schiaparelli); Demna Gvasalia (for Balenciaga and VETEMENTS); Johnson Hartig (for Libertine); Deirdre Hawken; Pam Hogg; Marc Jacobs; Rossella Jardini (for House of Moschino); Stephen Jones (for Giles Deacon, John Galliano, and House of Schiaparelli); Christopher Kane; Patrick Kelly; Ada Kokosar; Christian Lacroix; Karl Lagerfeld (for House of Chanel and Chloé); Mary Katrantzou; Rei Kawakubo (for Comme des Garçons); Tomo Koizumi; Bob Mackie; Martin Margiela; Stella McCartney (for Chloé); Alexander McQueen (for Givenchy); Alessandro Michele (for Gucci); Edward Molyneux; Erdem Moralioglu (for Erdem); Franco Moschino; Thierry Mugler; Alejandro Goméz Palomo (for Palomo Spain); JiSun Park and KyuYong Shin (for Blindness); Marjan Pejoski; Phoebe Philo (for Céline); Paul Poiret; Gareth Pugh; Richard Quinn; Traver Rains and Richie Rich (for Heatherette); Zandra Rhodes; William Dill-Russell; Yves Saint Laurent; Elsa Schiaparelli; Jeremy Scott (for Moschino and his own label); Hedi Slimane (for Saint Laurent); Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren (for Viktor & Rolf); Anna Sui; Jun Takahashi (for Undercover); Michael Travis; Philip Treacy; Giambattista Valli; Walter Van Beirendonck; Patric DiCaprio, Claire Sullivan, and Bryn Taubensee (for Vaquera); Gianni Versace; and Vivienne Westwood.

“Camp’s disruptive nature and subversion of modern aesthetic values has often been trivialized, but this exhibition will reveal that it has had a profound influence on both high art and popular culture,” said Max Hollein, Director of The Met. “By tracing its evolution and highlighting its defining elements, the show will embody the ironic sensibilities of this audacious style, challenge conventional understandings of beauty and taste, and establish the critical role that this important genre has played in the history of art and fashion.”

The exhibition is made possible by Gucci. With additional supportprovided by Condé Nast.

For more information on The Met Gala and Camp: Notes on Fashion, visit metmuseum.org and be sure to tune into social media on Monday, May 6 to see everything Met Gala!