Fashion’s biggest night of the year took place earlier this week, and it has a Royal connection that few know about. The Met Gala has been taking place since 1948 to fundraise for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The institute receives no funding from the museum and so holds the benefit to encourage attendees to donate. Now, fashion houses buy tables at the event (for about £280,000 a pop) and invite guests, who are okayed by former Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour. But the gala has not always been packed with influencer and reality TV stars. Wintour took over the organisation of the ball in 1995, amid an ongoing rivalry with the editor of Harper’s Bazaar, Elizabeth Tilberis. The pair were in a battle to make their magazine the best in the industry. Then, in 1996, Tilberis was able to do something Wintour couldn’t, tempt Diana, Princess of Wales, to attend the Met Gala. Diana went to the event as Tilberis’ guest and then appeared on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar in 1997.
According to Filipa Fino, the former senior accessories director at American Vogue, this infuriated Wintour and she never had the chance to equal Tilberis before Diana’s tragic death in 1997.
The former Vogue staff member said this pushed Wintour to make the Met Gala the biggest event of the social calendar, and still keeps her motivated.
Fino told The Times: “This seed of Anna never being able to host Princess Diana at the Met, and her vision of what it should be like – worthy of a princess – is what drove her from 1996 to today. She took on the Costume Institute Ball as her own personal project.”
The Met Gala has gone from a fashion insider ball to a highly publicised event, pulling in everyone from music royalty like Madonna to influencers like Emma Chamberlain.
When Princess Diana attended in 1996, she wore a £10,000 midnight-blue dress designed by John Galliuano for Dior with a sapphire choker set in a triple strand of pearls and her Lady Dior bag, originally called the ‘Chouchou’, and renamed in her honour.
Fashion editor Hilary Alexander described it as “the most important dress since Liz Hurley wore her safety-pinned Versace”, as it was unheard of for a royal to do ‘underwear as outerwear’ for a formal event.