Met Gala Flashback 1979

A Met Gala flashback from 1980 via Town and Country magazine...

"One glance at the committee names on the invitation to The Metropolitan Museum of Art's 'Fashions of the Hapsburg Era' opening in last December made it clear that one would not be hobnobbing with little match girls or the ladies who fix the flowers.  The committee chaired by Mrs. William F. Buckley Jr., was a constellation of the brightest stars in New York's social firmament and included Mrs. Winston Guest, Nancy, Lady Keith, Mrs. Aristotle Onassis, Mrs. Giovanni Agnelli, Mrs. Walter Annenberg, Miss Doris Duke, Mrs. Charles Englehard, Princess Lee Radziwill...  These well heeled heavenly bodies, glittering like Fourth of July sparkers in their haute couture gowns, radiate magnetic currents and powerful g forces.

Mary Sykes Cahan, the Metropolitan Mueum's senior public affairs associate in charge of the dinner that accompanies the exhibition which benefits the Costume Institute.  This dinner has long been a fundraiser for the CI, but became bigger in the 1970s with the appointment of Diana Vreeland as special consultant.  

Mrs Cahan said, 'Everything, from the invitation down to the placment of the last fork, goes through us.  No tapers, only unscented, votive candles are used.  Wax blows.  People deserve a suberb evening when hundresd of dollars have been spent.'

There's a waitng list for the six hndred invitations to the $300-per-person dinner.  Fifteen hundred tickets, priced at $75 for the post-dinner drinking, dancing viewing of the exhibit and the ultimate in people watching is the hottest ticket in town."

Town and Country, September 1980

Photos by Ron Galella from the Costume Institute Met Gala opening for Fashions of the Hapsburg Era, 1979

love, kisses and Party of the Year memories, Juliana