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The first Monday of May is considered by many (including myself) to be a national holiday. It\u2019s the Met Gala! The curiosity of what celebrities will be wearing, who will be the best dressed and who will completely miss the mark when it comes to the theme always keeps audiences gawking at their phones and refreshing fashion publications. <\/strong>However, the Met Gala wasn\u2019t always as anticipated as it is today. What is now a crucial day for the celebrity and fashion obsessed was once simply just another affair.<\/p>\n At the end of the 1940s, society was fresh off the end of World War II and Americans were feeling optimistic for the future. New York experienced a post-war boom, and American art and fashion began to thrive on their own. The Costume Institute (originally founded<\/a> in 1937 as the Museum of Costume Art) served as a fashion hub \u2014 providing collections of dresses for film and theater designers \u2014 and eventually merged with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1946. Initially independently funded, the institute needed a way to raise money, and so, as both a fundraiser and a celebration of the opening of its annual new exhibit, the Met Gala was born.<\/p>\n On Dec. 18, 1948, socialites were invited to wear their most formal attire and attend a midnight dinner at the Waldorf Astoria<\/a>, which cost a measly $50<\/a> (worth $660 today). Eleanor Lambert<\/a>, publishing genius and founder of the gala, soon christened the event \u201cThe Party of the Year.\u201d Almost two and a half decades later, in 1972<\/a>, former Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland became a consultant to the Costume Institute and permanently shifted the event to the Met, making this so called party bigger than ever before.\u00a0<\/p>\n That same Diana Vreeland also presented the brilliant idea of theming the gala<\/a>, further introducing a new sense of abstractness and creativity by giving each gala a unique vision to differentiate it from those that came before. Legendary celebrities soon began to take part, with former first lady Jackie Kennedy Onassis serving as the co-chair of the gala in 1976 and 1977. Current Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour later took over<\/a> as gala chair in 1995, and in 2001, the event\u2019s date was solidified to occur on the now-iconic first Monday of May. <\/p>\n