As on every first Monday of May, as evening falls on Fifth Avenue, hundreds of the world’s most famous people will walk the 150-meter red carpet that leads to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Their goal? To be seen at the Met Gala, the indisputable party of the year on the New York social calendar and the grand fashion soirée on a global scale. An exclusive event whose birth we owe to Eleanor Lambert, the empress of New York.
Since 1995, Anna Wintour has been the person in charge of directing the Met Gala with an iron fist, wrapped in a dress by Oscar de la Renta, Prada or Chanel. The former editor of Vogue has been the driving force behind the gala’s transformation, which shifted from a dinner for museum patrons to becoming a world-renowned showcase for her vision of the fashion industry. However, we must go back to 1948 to find the birth of this glamorous event.
Eleanor Lambert was one of the most influential women of the 20th century in the realms of art and fashion. Born in Crawfordsville, Indiana, in 1903, her father left the family to work in the circus, so she had to earn a living cooking for the students at the local university. She worked part-time as a shopping columnist for two newspapers and studied for a time to become a sculptor before realizing that her discerning eye for art was her greatest asset.
In 1925, at 22, she moved to New York with her first husband and found work writing a fashion bulletin. She also designed book covers and called celebrities to secure statements. After starting her own public relations business, she ended up as an agent for artists such as Dalí or Pollock, who often paid her with artworks rather than money, so by age 30 she already had an enviable art collection.
Eleanor Lambert and the Creation of the Met Gala
The designer Annette Simpson was her first client in the world of fashion. Over time she would come to represent names as important as Oscar de la Renta, Calvin Klein and Halston. At that time, American designers’ names were not recognized brands. Instead, clothing carried the labels of store manufacturers such as Saks Fifth Avenue, unlike Parisian designers, who had brands bearing their own names.
Convinced that American talent deserved the same recognition and promotion, in 1948, after helping found the Costume Institute and merging it with the Met, Lambert created the first charity gala for the Costume Institute. An intimate dinner that cost only $50 (this year’s admission is $100,000 per person) and was held each year at midnight in a different location across New York City.
Diana Vreeland with Yves Saint Laurent in 1982.
Eleanor Lambert led the Met Gala during the first two decades of its existence, until the early 1970s, when Diana Vreeland took charge of the organization and held the charity gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time. Vreeland debuted with a gala celebrating the work of Spanish designer Cristóbal Balenciaga, and it was she who turned the party into a true social happening.
Eleanor Lambert and the Creation of the Met Gala
Beyond being the first driving force behind the Met Gala, among her other notable contributions to the fashion world were being the first to hire Black models for fashion shows and advertisements. She also advised Truman Capote on his legendary Black & White Ball of 1966 and played a pivotal role in drawing 53 million people to the 1964 New York World’s Fair to see her fashion shows.
Eleanor Lambert remained a prominent figure in the American fashion scene even after retiring. The Council of Fashion Designers of America’s Citation Award bears her name in her honor. Lambert died in 2003 at the age of 100, and up until a few months before her death she continued compiling the International Best-Dressed List.
