Met Gala announces 2024 theme and no, it's not Disney-related: Everything we know

Like clockwork, Mariah Carey is defrosting for Christmas and the Met Gala is unveiling its 2024 theme.

The Costume Institute Benefit, commonly known as Met Gala, revealed revealed Wednesday that the theme is "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion."

The fairytale event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art typically invites celebrity guests like Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, Rihanna and A$AP Rocky, The Kardashian-Jenner family, Anne Hathaway, Jared Leto, Billy Porter and more to kick off the museum's spring 2024 exhibit. Yet to be announced: the celebrity hosts of the May 6 affair.

What is the 2024 Met Gala theme?

The "sleeping beauties" is not inspired by Disney princess, but rather treasured garments in the museum’s collection that are so fragile that they need to be housed in special glass "coffins" rather than on mannequins, curators said. Garments will be displayed in a series of galleries organized by themes of nature.

"Using the natural world as a uniting visual metaphor for the transience of fashion, the show will explore cyclical themes of rebirth and renewal, breathing new life into these storied objects through creative and immersive activations designed to convey the scents, sounds, textures, and motions of garments that can no longer directly interact with the body," the museum said in a statement.

Curator Andrew Bolton, who masterminds all the Met Gala exhibits, explained that the show includes both rare historical garments and corresponding contemporary fashions.

"When an item of clothing enters our collection, its status is changed irrevocably," Bolton said in the statement. "What was once a vital part of a person’s lived experience is now a motionless 'artwork' that can no longer be worn or heard, touched, or smelled. The exhibition endeavors to reanimate these artworks by re-awakening their sensory capacities."

When is the Met Gala 2024?

The Met Gala is the first Monday in May as is tradition. The exact date next year is May 6.

The exhibit will be open to the public from May 10 to Sept. 2, 2024.

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About 250 garments and accessories spanning four centuries will be on view. The exhibit will unfold in a series of rooms, each displaying a theme inspired by the natural world. "Within each space, historical fashions will be juxtaposed with their contemporary counterparts in an immersive environment intended to engage a visitor's sense of sight, smell, touch, and hearing," the museum stated.

Examples will include a space decorated with the "insectoid embroidery" of an Elizabethan bodice, or a ceiling projecting "a Hitchcockian swarm of black birds" surrounding a black tulle evening dress from before the outbreak of World War II.

Contributing: The Associated Press

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