The theme was the man himself. "Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty," the Costume Institute's spring 2023 exhibition and its accompanying gala, honored the designer who had shaped fashion for more than half a century, from his early work at Balmain and Patou through his transformative tenures at Fendi and Chanel. Lagerfeld, who died in February 2019 at the age of 85, was a figure of such outsized personality and prolific output that any tribute risked being overwhelmed by its subject. The Met Gala on the first Monday in May rose to the occasion with an evening that blended reverence, spectacle, and enough red-carpet drama to fuel months of discourse.
The co-chairs — Penelope Cruz, Michaela Coel, Roger Federer, and Dua Lipa, with Anna Wintour serving in her permanent role as gala hostess — represented the breadth of Lagerfeld's cultural influence. He had dressed movie stars and tennis champions, designed costumes for opera and uniforms for flight attendants. The co-chair lineup reflected a designer whose reach extended far beyond the fashion industry's usual boundaries.
The Arrivals
The red carpet, which opened at 6 PM under clearing skies, produced a sequence of arrivals that will be referenced in fashion history for years. Jared Leto arrived dressed as Choupette, Lagerfeld's beloved Birman cat, in a full-body feline costume that was simultaneously absurd, committed, and, in its total rejection of conventional red-carpet logic, oddly moving. The look dominated social media for the rest of the evening, generating the kind of virality that the Met Gala relies on to maintain its cultural relevance.
Dua Lipa wore vintage Chanel from the brand's archives, a gesture of respect to Lagerfeld's most famous association that also served as a reminder of the designer's extraordinary range. The gown, from a 1992 couture collection, looked as contemporary as anything on the carpet, a testament to Lagerfeld's design sensibility that anticipated trends rather than following them.
Nicole Kidman, in a vintage Chanel couture gown that she had originally worn to the brand's 2004 show, embodied the exhibition's thesis — that Lagerfeld's work existed outside of time, equally powerful in its original context and in its contemporary reinterpretation. Kim Kardashian, wearing a custom Schiaparelli look by Daniel Roseberry, arrived in a gown covered in pearls that referenced Lagerfeld's well-known fondness for the material. The look required 50,000 individual pearls and, reportedly, over 1,000 hours of handwork.
The Exhibition
Beyond the spectacle of the gala itself, the exhibition that it celebrated was a serious and illuminating survey of a career that had shaped fashion more profoundly than any single designer of his generation. Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute's curator, organized the show around the concept of the line — both the drawn line of Lagerfeld's legendary sketches and the silhouette line that defined his approach to garment construction.
The exhibition featured approximately 150 garments spanning the entirety of Lagerfeld's career, from his earliest designs at Balmain in the 1950s through his final collection for Chanel, presented posthumously in 2019. The installation, designed by the architect Tadao Ando, placed the garments in a series of austere, light-filled galleries that allowed the clothes to speak without competing with their environment. The curatorial decision to present work from Lagerfeld's less commercially prominent periods — his time at Chloe, his independent label — alongside the iconic Chanel and Fendi pieces provided a more complete portrait of the designer than most retrospectives attempt.
The choice to honor Lagerfeld was not without controversy. The designer, who was known for his caustic wit, had made numerous public statements over the course of his career that would be considered offensive by contemporary standards. Critics argued that the Met Gala's celebration of Lagerfeld constituted an endorsement of views that the institution should not be seen to support. The Costume Institute's response — that the exhibition addressed Lagerfeld's design work rather than his personal opinions — satisfied some and frustrated others, reflecting a broader cultural tension about how to engage with the legacies of complicated creative figures.
The Morning After
The post-gala analysis played out across the usual channels: best-dressed lists in every major publication, social media debates about the appropriateness of various looks, and the inevitable ranking of the evening against previous galas. By most accounts, the 2023 edition ranked among the strongest in recent memory, both for the quality of the individual looks and for the coherence of the evening's overall aesthetic.
The Lagerfeld tribute accomplished what the best Met Galas achieve: it created a night that existed simultaneously as a fashion event, a cultural conversation, and a social spectacle, each dimension enriching the others. The exhibition would remain open through July, drawing audiences who had been inspired by the gala's red carpet to engage with the work that lay behind the glamour. And in the end, that is the Met Gala's highest function — not the looks themselves, but the curiosity they ignite, the conversations they provoke, and the attention they direct toward the art of fashion and the institution that preserves it.
