Simply laying a literal red carpet for a red carpet event is no longer enough. Especially when it's a party as big as the Met Gala.
Each year, the Met Gala rolls out a new carpet design inspired by the evening's theme.
This year, the star-studded audience, including co-chairs Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny and Chris Hemsworth, walk up the steps covered in a cream color with moss green accents along the sides.
The design choice is in keeping with the dress code of the 2024 Met Gala, 'The Garden of Time', inspired by a story by JG Ballard.
Meanwhile, the sides of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's legendary steps are lined with green-covered barriers between the stars and photographers and reporters, and the walls are painted with forest scenes that look like they could come out of an Old Masters painting.
The Met Gala carpet even became a subject of humor Saturday evening live on weekends with regular series Chloe Fineman. Imitate Anna Wintour and dressed in a floral dress, Fineman walked across a set intended to resemble the steps of the Metropolitan to make a final inspection of the set scheme. “I think it clashes with the flowers. … I'm not sure about the carpet,” Fineman deadpanned.
According to a comprehensive history of the Met Gala carpet, published by Restrained in 2022, the museum's famous Costume Institute benefit project didn't even have a carpet in its early years. The first red carpets appeared at the event in the mid-aughts and the first specially designed carpets appeared in 2016.
That year, for the 2016 show Manus x Machinathe carpet was colored with geometric swirls of cream, pink and red.
In 2017, the year of the museum's exhibition honoring designer Rei Kawakubo, the carpet was white with blue edges.
In 2018, the color cream returned, with design details reminiscent of a cathedral, a tribute to that year's exhibition, Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.
For the Camp In 2019 the gala had – how could it be otherwise – pink as the color.
For 2021 and 2022, the galas will be held in combination with the two-part exhibition In America: a lexicon of Fashionthe carpet was cream with leaf green accents, followed by a red, white and blue color scheme.
Last year, the carpet was designed by legendary Japanese architect Tadao Ando, who also designed the museum's exhibition, Karl Lagerfeld: A line of beauty. The carpet, which some online critics said reminded them of Colgate toothpaste, was white and featured swirls of red and blue.
Each year, the design for the Met Gala arrivals is overseen by event planner Raul Àvila and in recent years has been painted by Phillip Bland, who told Restrained, “My hope is that when the final design comes out, it won't clash too much. If someone spent all this money on this beautiful dress and suddenly came out, I'm sure they wouldn't know what the carpet would look like.”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute's latest exhibition, Sleeping Beauty: Fashion Reawakening, opens to the public on Friday, May 10. Curated by Andrew Bolton, the show highlights fragile pieces from the institute's archives, all viewed through a lens of nature. From the exhibition coffee table book will be released on June 18. Read more from The Hollywood Reporter'S Met Gala coverage here.