Ahead of the 2024 Met Gala, the Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who's at the helm of each year's Benefit ball, extended an apology for the “confusion” caused by this year's theme.

The 2024 theme of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition was “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” which ultimately went hand-in-hand with the gala's dress code, i.e. “The Garden of Time.”

Over the years, the Met Gala red carpet has often witnessed a diverse array of hand-picked celebrities strolling down in outfits loosely inspired by these pre-established themes. The glittering event's wardrobe picks have always come under heavy scrutiny from netizens as people continue to question if the attendees had fully “understood the assignment.”

The exception of a good few divas, including Zendaya, Blake Lively, Rihanna and Lady Gaga, who've somehow always knocked it out of the park with their Met attires fitting the bill, have become perennially fan-favourite spectacles. However, with this year's theme, Wintour claimed to have broken her “cardinal rule," which ultimately opened the room to “many, many things” and full blown-out “confusion” about the dress code.

Here's why Anna Wintour apologised about the 2024 Met Gala theme

Speaking to Today's Jenna Bush Hager on Monday, May 6, Wintour said, “This exhibition broke my cardinal rule.”

“When we came up with the title ‘Sleeping Beauties,’ it's wonderful and poetic and romantic, but actually, it could be many, many things,” Wintour explained further.

She also added that upon consulting Andrew Bolton, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute curator, for the gala's dress code, Wintour asked him, “What are we gonna say to people to wear to this night?” Bolton then came up with the ‘Garden of Time’ theme.

“I feared that we've unleashed a lot of confusion out there, and for which I deeply apologise,” continued Wintour.

Undoubtedly it led her to the consideration of what celebs would actually wear on the D-Day. Wintour had already perceived that they'd see “a lot of flowers.” The Today interviewer then probed further to confirm if Wintour would herself take on the idea of sporting florals. The Vogue chief teased, “Possibly,” which, as we know, she ultimately delivered as she was snapped flaunting florals on the red carpet on Monday.

Speaking more on what ‘Sleeping Beauties’ represented, Wintour explained, “The idea of ‘Sleeping Beauties’ is taking these masterpieces from different periods, and because so many of them are very fragile, they are laid flat behind glass walls.”

Lines blur between Fiction and Reality

Beyond the pages of reality, looking at the rather-floral-inspired theme of the fashion night, netizens instantly jumped back in time, remembering Meryl Streep's iconic line from the 2006 comedy-drama film The Devil Wears Prada based on Lauren Weisberger's novel.

Although The Devil Wears Prada author hasn't officially proclaimed fashioning her grey antagonist (of sorts), Miranda Priestly, after Wintour, the world's audience has somehow collectively stood firm on the character being heavily inspired by the real-life Vogue boss.

Some fans even quoted Priestly's sardonic immortal words, “Floral? For Spring? Groundbreaking," and tied them to Wintour's real-life Met Gala theme going off Priestly's script. Though Vogue's chief apology for the theme was more centric around the “confusion” it had generated, one can't help but now correlate the breaking of her “cardinal rule” with this as well.

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