The annual flurry of fashion insiders, designers, celebrities, and socialites that is the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala celebrated all things British this year. Inspired by the Met's forthcoming "AngloMania" exhibit of Britain's posh and punk fashion, the benefit put an English twist on last year's Chanel-inspired French garden, featuring a sprawling, four-room layout adorned with more than 30,000 flowers.
Known widely as the "party of the year," the much-fussed-over benefit followed the well-covered protocol established in years past, with Vogue editor Anna Wintour leading the planning crusade of involved parties, including the Met's vice president for development and membership, Nina Diefenbach, and manager of special events, Ashley Potter; Rose Marie Bravo and Christopher Bailey, the C.E.O. and creative director, respectively, of sponsor Burberry; Vogue special events director Stephanie Winston Wolkoff; and event designer David E. Monn. (British It girl Sienna Miller also lent her name as a co-chairwoman.)
"We've been in preparation mode since last October," said Monn, who replaced longtime gala designer Robert Isabell in 2005, "and it's been quite a collaborative process."
Once past the red carpet and inside the museum, 728 heavy-hitters from both here and abroad (including assorted pairings of power couples, such as the Olsen twins, Charlize Theron and John Galliano, and Sarah Jessica Parker and Alexander McQueen) found a fantasy English garden setting—a theme dreamed up by Wintour on a recent trip to England. Monn worked with dozens of flower varieties, as well as grass, moss, vines, and fruit trees. The cocktail hour commenced in the museum's Carroll and Milton Petrie European Sculpture Court and was immediately followed by dinner in the Charles Engelhard Court in the American Wing.
Seventy rectangular and circular tables were set up in separate mini-gardens, hedged by 400 feet of espalier apple trees brought in from Connecticut. Blooming bulbs of daffodils, hyacinths, and ferns surrounded the base of each tree, while the floors were swathed in carpets of spring grass. Thirty-foot-tall spirals of wisteria vine with budding blossoms wrapped columns throughout the room. The tables themselves were bare willow wood, sans linens, with three separate centerpieces of white daffodils, hyacinths, and narcissus.
While sitting in what resembled an English courtyard, guests dined on a dinner menu developed with Jamie Oliver (the Brit known as the "naked chef") and provided by Glorious Food. The first course was smoked salmon with English shoots, paired with a 2004 Château Carbonnieux, and the second course was lamb pie and spring vegetables served with a 1996 Château Les Hauts de Pontet.
Before the after-party, kilt-clad bag pipers ushered guests into the Temple of Dendur in the Sackler Wing. Monn made over the temple as a theater where guests watched a performance of a scene from the musical Billy Elliot by Liam Mower, one of the three rotating leads in the West End production. Prior to Mower's piece, an ensemble of 30 young dancers from the School of American Ballet performed.
Next up was the invite-only after-party, limited to just 400 additional guests. Monn channeled the Scottish highlands inside the museum's Great Hall by covering the room's massive staircase with moss to resemble rolling hills, which he accentuated with pear trees. The centerpiece of the room, however, was a 20-foot-wide apple tree in full blossom. All guests were able to view the "AngloMania" exhibition during the after-party, while capping off the evening with English tea cakes and coffee, or British brew Old Speckled Hen.
"Transforming a working public institution into an English garden is no easy task, especially when we have to open our doors to the public at 9:30 the next morning," Diefenbach said. Staffers began breaking down the decor in the Great Hall, the Carroll and Milton Petrie European Sculpture Court, and the Temple of Dendur shortly after guests left at 1 AM. The American Wing, however, was closed to the public on Tuesday.
—Courtney Thompson
Posted 05.03.06
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