Met Gala 2023 live updates: red carpet fashion, celebrity arrivals and the Karl Lagerfeld theme

Fashion’s biggest night is underway at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. This year’s theme is ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A line of beauty’. Follow along for live updates from the red carpet and dinner

Welcome to The Met Gala, the biggest night in red carpet fashion. Sure we have the Oscars, the Grammys and the Emmys, but it’s only the Met where the focus is on the gowns, and where the carpet is the event rather than simply the lead up. It’s a costume party, a social media phenomenon, a convergence of art and clothes that somehow generates more media fuss than the Super Bowl.

So what do you need to know before we kick off? The gala always takes place on the first Monday in May – today – and marks the opening of the Costume Institute’s annual blockbuster exhibition, to which it is closely themed. This year it’s “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” an homage to the longtime designer behind Chanel, Chloé, Fendi, his own Karl Lagerfeld label and early work at Balmain and Patou. Lagerfeld died in 2019, leaving a legacy that epitomised the way fashion can permeate wider culture, turning monochrome into a thing, and offending various people along the way.