The Met Gala is one of the most important nights for fashion and culture, bringing the who’s who of fashion under one roof. The gala celebrates the importance of fashion, its preservation and the need to be studied by forthcoming generations. The theme of Met Gala 2026 – ‘Costume Art’ – is a testament to this. The dress code – ‘Fashion is Art’ – sits at the centre of the theme. It asks designers to treat the human body as a blank canvas. In the last few years, the Met Gala followed a trend where it took inspiration from books. Case in point: the 2020 theme inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Orlando; the 2024 theme inspired by J.G. Ballard’s short story The Garden of Time; and last year’s theme Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, inspired by Monica L. Miller’s Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. Interestingly, this year there are no such literary inspirations. We, however, have our readers and fashion enthusiasts covered.…