The Garden of Time: What is the 2024 Met Gala theme all about?
New York, New York - The 2024 Met Gala is just around the corner, and this year the theme is named after a short story called The Garden of Time. Here's what it's all about.
This year, the theme is more open-ended than the 2023 edition, which was all about Karl Lagerfeld.
As per tradition, Monday's event will coincide with the Metropolitan Museum of Art's new spring exhibition.
Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion will showcase over 250 historically significant costumes, many of which are too fragile ever to be worn again and were inspired by the natural world.
The Costume Institute's show celebrates fashion history by presenting some of the most fabulous pieces ever made and will display them as they relate to the natural elements that inspired them.
It also aims to highlight the need for sustainability in fashion and examine that endless cycle of creation and destruction, which is where J.G. Ballard's 1962 short story The Garden of Time comes in.
The Garden of Time is beautiful and brutal
The story, like the exhibition itself, mirrors that wish to grasp a moment, or a beautiful thing, and to suspend all its glory, even as it decays and destruction looms.
In the Garden of Time, Count Axel and his wife, live in a beautiful villa surrounded by a wall, art, leisure, and a magical garden full of crystal-time flowers. To fend off an advancing throng or army headed for their oasis, the Count breaks off time flowers one by one, allowing them to disintegrate in his hands. This destruction turns back time and holds the danger at bay. As the garden is dying, the solution is temporary. The Count and his wife pack their treasures, together pick the last flowers, and prepare for the end.
Ballard's The Garden of Time is ripe with imagery that could inspire surprising looks, from flowers both fantastical and crystal to dark and terrifying like an army or black mass slowly encroaching on the horizon.
Perhaps there will be porcelain-like skin like in Maison Margiela's latest runway show or stunning botanical-inspired gowns.
The 2024 Met Gala dress code may produce looks that play with the themes of nature, creation, destruction, and decay.
Cover photo: 123rf/undrey