What is the Met Gala 2025 theme? The event’s ‘Tailored For You’ dress code explained

The long-awaited dress code for the 2025 Met Gala has finally been announced – but some people are struggling to understand what it means. 2024’s dress code was Garden of Time which saw the likes of Kim Kardashian, Lana Del Rey and other stars posing on the red carpet at the New York event that’s widely regarded as the world’s most prestigious and glamorous fashion event. This year, the theme has been revealed to be ‘Tailored for You.’.

The organisers of the event have shared that the dress code is a nod to the costume exhibition the museum will be hosting: ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.’. The exhibit will ‘explore the role of sartorial style in forming Black identities, focusing on the emergence, significance, and proliferation of the Black dandy,’ according to the Met. It was inspired by guest curator Monica L. Miller’s 2009 book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity.

But some people are finding the theme difficult to wrap their heads around. X user @prty_grl_mantra wrote: ‘I’m still a little confused by this dress code, does it open space for women to wear luxurious dresses or can they only wear suits?’. @wineymarie agreed: ‘What does that mean?’. @glossyjeans posted: ‘Can someone explain to me how this will go? What do they wear?’. Here’s everything you need to know about the 2025 Met Gala.

For those not in the know, the Met Gala is the annual haute couture fundraising festival held for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in Manhattan. It’s become something of a who’s-who in the world of fashion and celebrity, and people from all over the world watch as famous faces arrive in outfits that range from bold to downright absurd. The tickets to the event are extremely expensive, coming in around $75k last year. All of the money raised at the event goes towards the Costume Institute, which works to preserve fashion history and is among the most comprehensive archive of clothes in the world.

They have thousands of historical garments, such as a 1898 ball gown from House of Worth, founded by Charles Worth, who is widely considered the father of haute couture (high dressmaking). As menswear expert Derek Guy (@dieworkwear) pointed out in an insightful X thread about the Gala: ‘The gala funds historical preservation, scholarship, and public education around fashion. The beautiful garments you see are also sometimes custom-made, which supports tailors and craftspeople. For these crafts to survive, craftspeople need customers.’.

The Gala is also a star-maker, with attention grabbing outfits giving lesser-known names in the entertainment industry the exposure needed to take their careers to the next level (Zendaya was a favourite on the Met Gala carpet long before she was the household name she is now). As many people have pointed out, the theme of the 2025 Met Gala was actually announced months ago, but the guidance for the guests to interpret the theme was only just released, as well as the names of the people serving as chairmen of the Gala.

Vogue clarifies the theme in a recent article, explaining: ‘Tailored for You can be interpreted in a myriad of ways, but it mostly means embracing looks reflective of one’s personal style. ‘We can surely expect inspired takes on suiting—from versions of the zoot silhouette popularized by jazz musicians in the 1940s to the bold, colorful styles worn by Congolese sapeurs—though other menswear staples, such as hats, ties, canes, brooches, and pocket squares, are likely to have a strong showing too.’.

Monica L. Miller – whose book Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity inspired the exhibition – wrote in a statement about the theme: ‘Dandyism can seem frivolous, but it often poses a challenge to or a transcendence of social and cultural hierarchies.’. She continued: ‘It asks questions about identity, representation, and mobility in relation to race, class, gender, sexuality, and power. This exhibition explores dandyism as both a pronouncement and a provocation.’.

So how will all of those big words actually translate into clothing?. You can definitely expect a lot of menswear and jazz age inspired looks (think double breasted suits) as well as tributes to Black culture. Gender-bending is certainly one of the themes at play here too, so celebrities will almost certainly take the event as an opportunity to play with their usual expressions of gender. ‘I feel that the show itself marks a really important step in our commitment to diversifying our exhibitions and collections, as well as redressing some of the historical biases within our curatorial practice,’ lead curator Andrew Bolton said in a statement. ‘It’s very much about making fashion at The Met more of a gateway to access and inclusivity.’.