Mark your calendars for the first Monday in May: The theme for the 2023 Met Gala has been revealed.
On Sept. 30, organizers of fashion's biggest night announced the upcoming theme, which will be celebrating the work of Karl Lagerfeld, the former creative director of Chanel who passed away in 2019 from complications of pancreatic cancer.
According to the Met, "Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty," will "explore the artistic methodology and stylistic vocabulary of Karl Lagerfeld's designs through recurring themes across more than 65 years, from the 1950s to his final collection in 2019." The 2023 Costume Institute Benefit, also known as the Met Gala, will take place on May 1.
The upcoming exhibition will be open to the public from May 2023 to July 2023 and will feature 150 of Lagerfield's designs from his time as creative director of Chloé, Fendi, Chanel, Balmain and Patou, as well as items from his eponymous label.
Andrew Bolton, the head curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said he became inspired after hearing Lagerfeld's design assistants pay tribute to him at his memorial service.
"I was so fascinated by how they communicated [with Lagerfeld], which was by drawings," Bolton told CNN Sept. 30. "Every single design in his life was a sketch. And when I saw the drawings, I thought, 'These are so charming, so whimsical, so impressionistic.' But what I didn't realize was that they contained really precise information—about a shoulder line or the length of a sleeve. And [his staff] knew exactly what this line meant or what that dot meant, and they could decode it."
The co-chairs of the 2023 Met Gala—which last year included Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds—have not been announced.