When guests arrive at this year’s Met Gala in celebration of “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” they will be greeted not with a red carpet, but with an off-white carpet trimmed at the edges with a sprinkling of airbrushed green foliage. “We were inspired by the idea of the museum transforming into an enchanted forest at dusk and looked to the pre-Raphelites for inspiration for an immersive experience for our guests,” explained Eaddy Kiernan, a contributing editor who oversees the planning of the Met Gala. For the past 8 years the “red carpet” at the Met Gala has not actually been red; rather its design has been a reflection of the theme of that year's show.
Last year, the carpet was white, with a swirl of lines that mirrored not only the name of the show, “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” but the design of the exhibition itself. At the show’s press preview Andrew Bolton, Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute, described them as such: “The serpentine line signified his historicist, romantic, and decorative impulses, and the straight line denoted his modernist, classicist, and minimalist tendencies.” In fact, 2015’s “China: Through the Looking Glass,” was the last red carpet at a Met Gala. Since then, the carpet has generally incorporated a variety of colors, swooping designs, and motifs that make a statement without taking away attention—or clashing—with the myriad looks that walk upon it.
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