This year, for the very first time, a poet is hosting the Met Gala.
There have been designers. There have been celebrities. There have been media moguls. There has been a Jeff Bezos, and a Beyoncé. There has always, always been Anna Wintour. But a poet has never hosted the Met Gala . . . until now.
It has recently come to my attention that the 2021 Met Gala will be co-chaired by the Gen Z SuperFriends Amanda Gorman, Timothée Chalamet, Billie Eilish, and Naomi Osaka. Anna Wintour, Tom Ford, and Adam Mossari, the chief executive of Instagram, which is this year’s very appropriate sponsor, are also on board as honorary chairs.
As far as I can tell, Amanda Gorman will be the first poet to host the Met Gala—and Naomi Osaka will be the first athlete. “The closest analogy is feeling like Cinderella going to the ball,” she told Porter earlier this summer. “I think this is really groundbreaking. I’m even more enthusiastic to see all the other writers and poets who may grace that red carpet in the future. And I hope that, when you see my look, you can feel what I’m saying loud and clear.”
That said, there’s a flip side to becoming a celebrity poet. “I think so often writers are not only used to, but dependent on the sensation that we can go out amongst life and not cause any ripples. That we can watch and observe nature or humanity and that we will be an unrecognized piece of it, and we can write that in our stories,” she told Porter. “[Now], if I go to a bench or park and bring my journal to write, you can bet people are going to say, ‘I think that’s Amanda Gorman.'”
They sure will.
