Met Gala Will Require Attendees To Be Vaccinated, Masked Indoors

The Met Gala is back! The starry affair will return this fall, but with two important caveats: Everyone attending the event needs to be jabbed and must wear a mask indoors. As per People magazine, the upcoming Metropolitan Museum of Art and Vogue's annual Met Gala is enforcing a COVID-19 vaccination mandate and mask requirement.

"Currently, all attendees at The Met Gala on September 13 must provide proof of full vaccination and will also be expected to wear masks indoors except when eating or drinking," a spokesperson for The Met told People magazine. "We will update these guidelines as needed," added the spokesperson.

The theme for the star-studded event this year -- after a canceled 2020 Met Gala and a postponed May date -- is 'In America: A Lexicon of Fashion'. The Metropolitan Museum of Art confirmed in April that the annual fashion fete will be back -- in two parts.

The museum's next exhibition will include a series of events celebrating American fashion. Part one, titled 'In America: A Lexicon of Fashion', will debut on September 18, 2021, and run through September 5, 2022, to "celebrate The Costume Institute's 75th anniversary and explore a modern vocabulary of American fashion". Part two, 'In America: An Anthology of Fashion', will open on May 5, 2022, and "will explore the development of American fashion by presenting narratives that relate to the complex and layered histories of those spaces." It will also close on September 5, 2022.

To kick off the part one opening, "a more intimate" Met Gala is set to take place on the second Monday in September, it was announced in April. The part two event will adhere to the First Monday in May timing, set to take place on May 2, 2022. Gen Z superstars Timothee Chalamet, Billie Eilish, Naomi Osaka, and Amanda Gorman are hosting the biggest night in fashion, Vogue confirmed in May. Honorary chairs for the evening will be Tom Ford, Adam Mosseri, and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour.

The Met Gala's vaccination requirement announcement comes on the same day the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) announced a vaccine mandate for all guests, staff members, and individuals at New York Fashion Week events in accordance with New York City. On Tuesday, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city will require proof of vaccination to gain access to an array of indoor places, including restaurants, fitness centers, and entertainment facilities, becoming the first major city in the United States to do so.