Coronavirus Pandemic Won't Stop Fashion's Biggest Night, The Met Gala, From Going Ahead

Topline: 'The show must go on' appears to be the outlook of the Costume Institute, whose annual Met Gala fashion fest looks set to go ahead on May 4 despite other high profile events worldwide being cancelled or postponed amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

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• Nancy Chilton, chief external relations officer at the Costume Institute, said in an email: "We are proceeding as planned, but of course continue to keep a close eye on the situation."
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• The annual event is historically held at the Met on the first Monday in May, with Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour hosting this year's event alongside Louis Vuitton creative director Nicolas Ghesquiere, playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda, and actors Meryl Streep and Emma Stone.
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• This year's theme is 'About Time: Fashion and Duration', inspired by 1992 Sally Potter film Orlando, and will kick off the opening of this year's fashion exhibition at the Costume Institute, of the same name.

News peg: At least 8.7 million people worldwide have been impacted by event cancellations or delays prompted by the spread of Covid-19, and efforts to contain it. This includes SXSW, Coachella and June's Electronic Entertainment Expo, also known as the E3 video gaming summit,." You can keep up with Forbes' tracker of event cancellations here.

Big number: $15 million. That's how much the Met Gala raised at last year's ball.

Tangent: The Met celebrates its 150th year in 2020, with a raft of celebratory events slated to take place across the coming months, including a birthday celebration on April 13th. It remains to be seen whether they will all go ahead, as the Met says it has canceled some public events, limited staff travel and is working with the CDC and health officials in New York.

Key background: The annual ball is a fundraiser for the Met Museum's Costume Institute, with tickets going for $35,000 this year, according to The Cut. The gala's red carpet fashion show arguably one of the most anticipated and eagerly watched on the fashion calendar, with outfits and themes often entering the annals of fashion history. A 2016 documentary titled the First Monday In May offers a front row look at the work that went into organising the 2015 event organising the mammoth event.

Further reading: C-19 Event Cancellation Tracker: Millions Are Changing Plans After Concerts, Sporting Contests, Parades Canceled (Carter Coudriet)

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