Tickets to the annual Met Gala, otherwise known as the Oscars of Fashion, will rise to $25,000 each this year after organizers including Anna Wintour decided the New York event needs to be even more exclusive.
Page Six can reveal that while tickets were available for $15,000 for this May’s event, the price is rocketing to $25,000 for the glamorous event next May.
A source exclusively confirmed to us, “There will be one ticket price of $25,000 (last year there were $15,000 + $25,000 tickets) for the 2014 gala celebrating both the reopening of the Costume Institute and the Charles James exhibition.”
The Gala will be held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 5 with chair Aerin Lauder and co-chairs Bradley Cooper, Oscar de la Renta, Sarah Jessica Parker, Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch and Wintour.
While the move may see well-heeled fashionistas digging even deeper into their pocketbooks for the must-be-seen-at event, it also comes after Gwyneth Paltrow was critical of last May’s punk-themed gala.
The actress said in an interview with two Australian radio hosts, “Do you want me to be honest? It sucked. It seems like the best thing in the world. You think, ‘Oh my God, it’s going to be so glamorous and amazing, and you’re going to see all these famous people.’ And then you get there, and it’s so hot, and so crowded, and everyone’s pushing you. This year it was really intense. It wasn’t fun! Kanye West was playing, and he was furious, and he threw his microphone down. . . . And . . . I feel that we’re all a bit old to be dressed punk.”
Paltrow later half-retracted the statement, saying on her Web site Goop, “The Met Ball, at NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, is always the year’s most elaborate display of incredible fashion and this year was no different.”
Of course, attending designers are permitted to invite their model muses, but Wintour personally approves each guest.
Another source added, “Increasing the ticket price will make the Met Gala even more high-fashion, even more exclusive and even more aspirational.”
Reps for Wintour and the Costume Institute at the Met declined to comment last night.