the first monday in may

thetimes |  It’s the most exclusive party in the world — the Oscars of the fashion industry and the red carpet with the highest stakes — but what actually happens beyond the velvet rope at Anna Wintour’s Met Gala has remained a mystery to the likes of you and me.

Until now. A new documentary, The First Monday in May, follows the Vogue editor along with the fashion curator Andrew Bolton as they plan the Metropolitan Museum’s 2015 costume exhibition and the party to end all parties that will launch it to the rest of the world.

“There’s something surreal about the spectacle of all those people in such a heightened atmosphere,” says Rossi. “One of the theses of the film is that celebrity and haute couture combine to transcend their individual parts and become something even more powerful together.” Therein lies the event’s allure for the rest of us plebs: its mystique and its sheer stardust quota. Does it live up to the hype?

The first rule of the Met Gala has always been that you don’t talk about the Met Gala — or rather, you do, but only in suitably glowing terms. The few celebrities who have offered any other opinion of the annual bash haven’t been invited back.

Gwyneth Paltrow once described it as “hot, crowded and un-fun”; the comedian Tina Fey called it a “jerk parade” full of “all the people you would punch in the whole world”. For the rebel comic Amy Schumer, it was “people doing an impression of having a conversation, dressed like a bunch of f***ing assholes”.