How Do You Get an Invite to the Met Gala?

The Met Gala, held on the first Monday in May, is notoriously exclusive. The guest list is limited to about 450 to 600 attendees each year, and all guests need to be approved by Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour, who has cochaired the event most years since 1995. That’s right, the devil in Prada herself has the final say on each invitee. According to The New York Times chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman, Wintour prefers individuals with a high degree of achievement, buzz, and beauty (what Friedman terms “Ms. Wintour’s holy trinity”). Guests from previous years include actors Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet, models Gisele Bündchen and Adut Akech, performers Cardi B and Lady Gaga, athletes Angel Reese and Naomi Osaka, and many other cultural figures.

If you happen to have a lot of success, are really, really, ridiculously good-looking, and tend to generate tons of interest, you might be able to get an invite, but then you have to pay for a ticket. Or be the guest of someone who has paid for a table. Tickets are mind-bogglingly expensive. An individual ticket costs $75,000 (up 50 percent from $50,000 in 2023), while a table for 10 is $350,000. Fashion designers or brands typically buy tables and invite celebrities to fill the seats. These guests are then expected to wear one of that company’s garments, which reportedly must be approved by Wintour. And remember how she has final say on every guest? Each table’s seating arrangement must be finalized by Wintour, and she apparently has no qualms about replacing a company’s guest with an attendee of her choosing.

Tickets to the event are pricey, but the Met Gala is an annual benefit for the Costume Institute, the fashion department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It is the only department in the museum responsible for funding itself, and the Met Gala generates income for the Costume Institute to put on exhibitions, write publications, make acquisitions, and take care of other needs. In fact, the Met Gala is not only a charity event but also the glamorous opening of the Costume Institute’s yearly blockbuster exhibition. Presumably, guests at the Met Gala have an opportunity to view the show before being called to dinner and entertainment, but this part of the evening is pretty secretive. Attendees are not allowed to use their phones during the event and are discouraged from sharing information about it. The only portion of the gala that is documented is the much-talked-about red-carpet arrivals.

So, it seems that receiving an invite to the Met Gala is unlikely for most of us. We’ll also never really know what goes on at the benefit. But you can visit the Costume Institute’s exhibition, which typically runs into the fall. And isn’t the Costume Institute the whole point of the Met Gala anyway?