The Met Gala 2020 Theme Has Been Announced — Here's All You Need To Know

After "Heavenly Bodies and "Camp," here's what you need to know about the 2020 theme.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute has announced its 2020 theme for both its exhibition as well as the Met Gala: "About Time: Fashion and Duration". Here's what you need to know:

1. The theme is inspired by the novels of Virginia Woolf and theories of early 20th-century French philosopher Henri Bergson.

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Andrew Bolton, the Wendy Yu curator in charge of the Costume Institute, said he found inspiration in the 1992 Sally Potter film Orlando. “There’s a wonderful scene,” he told Vogue, “in which Tilda Swinton enters the maze in an 18th-century woman’s robe à la Francaise, and as she runs through it, her clothes change to mid-19th-century dress, and she reemerges in 1850s England. That’s where the original idea came from.”

2. The 2020 Met Gala will be a big deal because it'll mark the Met's 150th anniversary.

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According to The New York Times, about 70% of the exhibition will come from the museum’s holdings, and 30% will be new gifts in honor of the 150th anniversary sourced from designers or collectors.

3. The exhibition will feature 160 pieces of women's clothing from the past 150 years, bringing fashion from the past, present, and future.

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“What I like about Woolf’s version of time is the idea of a continuum,” Bolton told Vogue. “There’s no beginning, middle, or end. It’s one big fat middle. I always felt the same about fashion. Fashion is the present.”

The collection will be broken down into two sections: Black looks from 1870 to 2020, and then "counter-chronologies," mostly white ensembles, that have moved with time. Pretty much, they will show how fashion "moments" happen in history, but how other "moments" have moved throughout history.

According to The Met, "For example, a black princess-line dress from the late 1870s will be paired with an Alexander McQueen 'Bumster' skirt from 1995, and a black bustle ensemble from the mid-1880s will be juxtaposed with a Comme des Garçons 'Body Meets Dress—Dress Meets Body' dress from 1997."

4. The show will be designed by Es Devlin, who has also created sets for the Royal Opera House and for Beyoncé's Formation tour.

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On Devlin, Bolton added: “I’ve long admired her work and wanted to collaborate with her,” he says. “This theme seemed most suitable for her, she’s done several of what she calls mirror mazes and she often refers to the complexity of time with her design process.”

5. The actual Met Gala will be on May 4, 2020, and will be chaired by Nicolas Ghesquiére of Louis Vuitton, Emma Stone, Meryl Streep, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Anna Wintour.

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Lots of big names, and lots of potential to pull off an amazing show!

What do you guys think?