Written by Oscar Holland, CNN
Singer Dua Lipa, tennis star Roger Federer and actors Penélope Cruz and Michaela Coel will co-chair the 2023 Met Gala with Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour.
The celebrity quartet were unveiled Wednesday by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, whose Costume Institute is a beneficiary of the exclusive fundraiser.
The annual event, which takes place on May 1st, coincides with a major new exhibition on the life and work of fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, who died in 2019 at the age of 85. Attendees are asked to dress in the theme “Honoring Karl.” The four co-chairs, who have all attended the fundraiser in recent years, took to social media on Wednesday to confirm the announcement. Federer wrote on Instagram that he was “so excited” to be at the event with his “dear friend” Wintour, while Cruz, who walked the runway at Lagerfeld’s final Chanel show, posted the message alongside the caption “Karl” and a heart emoji.
This year will be one of the few occasions since Wintour began overseeing the event in the mid-1990s without fashion designers sitting under the chairs. While the past two years have seen appointments from other industries (the previous line-up included Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Regina King), American designer Tom Ford served as Honorary Chairman for both 2021 and 2022.
Anna Wintour arrives at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for last year’s Met Gala on May 2, 2022. Credit: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images
With tickets selling for over $30,000 per person, the invitation-only gala is a major source of funding for the Costume Institute. According to the New York Times, it raised $15 million for the museum in 2019.
The accompanying exhibition “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty”, open from early May to mid-July, brings together around 150 designs that “explore the designer’s stylistic language”. Items on display include creations from his time as creative director of Fendi, Chloé and Chanel, as well as pieces from his days at Balmain and Patou, and designs from his namesake label.
Speaking to CNN last fall when the theme for 2023 was first announced, Costume Institute chief curator Andrew Bolton said that the late Lagerfeld “would have hated a retrospective” but that the show was more of an “essay” about it his work will be similar. The last two galas, held in the span of eight months amid the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, were both themed around American fashion: 2021’s ‘In America: A Lexicon of Fashion’ and last year’s ‘Gilded Glamour and white tie.”