Dr. Elizabeth Lundén

Before Diana Breland, the Met Gala was announced in a little corner of a newspaper.

Like, oh, society gathered again and they got their dinner one more time.

And now it's like covers and covers of magazines around the world are talking about the Met Gala and about her and about everything around it.

the Met gets into this gloomy period of, that's it, we don't want cameras, we're socialites, we don't want to be in the spotlight, let's go back to our fundraising old school traditions, and this is a museum, so let's keep it, you know, let's keep it together.

So there's a moment where this tones down again.

And in the mid-1990s,

The money from the publishing companies, the fashion magazine industry, steps into the Met Gala.

They start sponsoring.

They start putting money because magazine readership has gone down.

And the era of these like grand editors, larger than life editors is gone.

So they want to recover that kind of power.

So they use the Met Gala.

to recover that power for the magazines, the fashion magazine publications.

And they start putting editors as chairs alongside fashion designers, etc., etc., pretty much as we see it today.

And that's when they start staging the entrance as a public spectacle.

So they are giving something to the public, a little sneak peek to make them believe that they are a part of it.

Oh, well, there was one.

I don't remember the names exactly now because I have a database with all of them.

But when they staged the Catholicism theme, I loved it.

And then I have to say that AOC wearing the Tax the Rich outfit