The Best Met Gala Looks Through the Years

The well of memorable Met Gala looks runs deep.

Typically, the first Monday in May marks the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Gala (plainly, the Met Gala). Since it first launched in 1948, the event has been a seemingly never-ending red-carpet parade of celebs—from fashion designers and Hollywood starlets to pop music icons and sports champs—who all come out to raise funds for the museum’s Costume Institute.

Remember Rihanna’s stunning yellow Guo Pei dress for “China: Through the Looking Glass”? Or Claire Danes’s light-up Zac Posen for “Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology”? What about Zendaya’s Joan of Arc moment in honor of “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”?

Over the years, there have been as many hits as misses, but even the not-so-great looks have something to teach us, whether it’s a lesson in how to best interpret a dress code or a reminder to take more risks.

This year, the theme for the Costume Institute’s exhibition, curated as usual by Andrew Bolton, is “Costume Art,” and the Gala’s accompanying dress code is “Fashion Is Art.” No doubt, the red (or whatever color) carpet steps will generate plenty of talk, from those mad about the number of influencers invited to others who say that with everything going on in the world, the entire affair is frivolous. As for us, we just wanna see some good old-fashioned fashion.

Scroll on through to see the most memorable Met Gala red-carpet moments of all time.