The Met Gala has grown from a simple fundraiser to one of the most exclusive and expensive red-carpet events of the year built around a theme—this year it will honor the late designer Karl Lagerfeld and host celebrities including Paris Hilton, Priyanka Chopra and Dua Lipa—that informs an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum.

The event is Monday, May 1.

Each of the 400 or so invited guests must purchase a ticket for $50,000—tables cost at least $300,000 each.

The gala will be livestreamed from 6:00 p.m. EST by Vogue. Tune in here or watch on their Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube pages.

The Met Gala started in 1948 as the Costume Institute Benefit, a so-called “midnight supper” led by publicist and fashion promoter Eleanor Lambert, who also invented New York Fashion Week. The event expanded into one of the most exclusive events of the year under the leadership of two Vogue editors-in-chief—Diana Vreeland from 1972 to 1989 and Anna Wintour, who took the role in 1995. Wintour is credited with turning the party into a who’s who of fashion and entertainment—and even politics. The Costume Institute’s exhibitions are housed in the Met’s Anna Wintour Costume Center.

The Costume Institute's yearly exhibit and corresponding gala theme is created by the institute’s chief curator Andrew Bolton and researched for years before being approved. Bolton told Vogue France that he looks for topics that generate conversation and tries to switch between broad concepts and themes honoring specific people. Once Bolton and his team dream up a concept, the theme must be approved by the director and president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art—Max Hollein and Daniel H. Weiss, respectively—and Wintour, a process that can take up to a year. This year’s theme honors designer Karl Lagerfeld, who spent five decades in the fashion industry, designing for brands like Chanel and Fendi before his death in 2019. Attendees have been instructed to dress “in honor of Karl,” which could mean anything from wearing brands he worked with—including his eponymous label “Lagerfeld”—to mimicking his iconic personal style.

Experts expect some celebrities to reference Lagerfeld’s beloved Birman cat, Choupette, who is rumored to have received a large inheritance from Lagerfeld upon his death. Some guests might come with stuffed (or real) cats, while others might wear fabrics in “Choupette blue,” a color inspired by the cat’s eyes that Lagerfeld debuted during his time at Chanel.

The Met Gala’s past themes—a two-part look at American fashion entitled “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” and “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” in 2022 and 2021, respectively, an exploration of the dramatic in 2019’s “Camp: Notes on Fashion,’ and 2018’s “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” to name a few—have yielded hundreds of iconic looks. Here are some of the looks counted among Vogue’s 130 most memorable styles.

The gala is an advertising hub for brands in all kinds of industries. Though celebrities often don elaborate and inaccessible outfits, marketers say the gala can boost sales for fashion brands’ off-the-rack collections, which are often the businesses’ main money-makers. Conversely, appearing at the Met Gala can heighten the image of traditionally less-exclusive brands like H&M. Fashion brands aren’t the only ones to get boosts—sponsors like Apple benefit from the event’s publicity, too.

Inside The Met Gala: The Money Behind Fashion’s Biggest Night (Forbes)

Everything You Need to Know About the 2023 Met Gala (New York Times)

The 130 Best Met Gala Looks of All Time (Vogue)