Several dramatic looks may come to mind when you think of the Met Gala red carpet.

Perhaps it’s Rihanna’s eye-catching yellow Guo Pei couture cape gown from the same year, or Beyoncé’s gem-encrusted Givenchy “naked” dress from Beyoncé. It might have been in 2019, when Law Roach instantly changed Zendaya’s Tommy Hilfiger magical Cinderella ball gown, or in 2021, when Kim Kardashian appeared dressed as a Balenciaga shadow. (Or her contentious Marilyn Monroe tribute from the previous year; the list is endless.)

But the bar for best-dressed hasn’t always been set quite this high at the Costume Institute soiree, which kicks off on the famous steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art each May.

Since the gala’s founding in 1948, the world’s most prominent figures in fashion have attended, including Cher, Princess Diana, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Diana Ross, and Bianca Jagger. In contrast to some of the cumbersome, constrictive, and occasionally impossible-to-sit-in costumes of recent years (hey, Katy Perry as a chandelier), historical images depict a far more conventionally elegant dress code.

Though some repeat themes would have been appropriate decades ago—after all, Cher performed the naked dress at the Met Gala in 1974 before, well, any number of others at the event—the red carpet has more recently evolved into a spectacle, giving the world a front-row seat and fostering ostentatious viral moments.

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