Derek McLane, the Tony Award-winning scenic designer, began planning for the Met Gala last August—nine months before the event itself. It’s his third year working on the annual fundraising gala in honor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute alongside longtime event designer Raúl Àvila. This year’s dress code was “Tailored for You,” going alongside the exhibition, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.» But, most of the decor was inspired by a single painting.
Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour enlisted New York-based artist Cy Gavin in the gala’s early planning stage, according to McLane. Gavin was inspired by the theme to create Untitled (Sky), a painting featuring daffodils on a midnight blue background. The flowers, turned at different angles, evoke stars in the night sky.
McLane’s rendering of the Temple of Dendur’s pavilion.
McLane, who normally designs Broadway sets (he was just nominated for another Tony for his work on Just In Time) took Gavin’s painting and transformed it into a carpet for arrivals. He also lined the short barriers next to the carpet in daffodils, which are also known as Narcissus flowers—McLane estimates about 4,000 of them.
In the museum’s Great Hall, McLane and Àvila crafted a massive, striking centerpiece, with, he says, “a mound of greenery and Narcissus flowers that were rising up towards the ceiling, creating what ultimately feels like a starfield overhead.”
The centerpiece inside the Great Hall.
Making flowers seem like they’re ascending into the sky was an involved project. McLane and Avila’s teams hung 7,000 Narcissus flowers on hundreds of pieces of invisible threads above the Great Hall and, at the bottom of each thread, a fishing weight held the flowers down. The threads were attached to a black net, which blended into the ceiling, and hung above the crowds.
“They created a delicate but three dimensional space that was always changing when you walk around it,” McLane said. “They do have this kind of magical floating quality.”
In total, McLane guesses he used 19,000 daffodils at this year’s Met Gala: 3,000 flowers in the centerpiece alone. Moving to the grand staircase, around 5,000 more Narcissus flowers lined the interior steps up to the European galleries.
The inside grand staircase, with daffodils floating overhead.
Around the Temple of Dendur, where the dinner took place, McLane crafted a backdrop drawing on the evening’s theme. “I designed the whole surround, which felt like a fine English men’s tailoring shop. It was all wood paneled and molding and gold mirrors,” McLane said. The team also projected Gavin’s painting onto the ceiling of the gallery pavilion.
The Temple of Dendur setup took about five days—the museum closes off the room ahead of the gala. But the “trickiest part” of the setup, McLane said, was the Great Hall and staircase, because the museum was open to the public until 5pm the day before the gala. So, starting at 6pm Sunday, a crew worked through the night to assemble those installations in time for the event. Everything that we set up is obviously quite temporary and needs to be set up rather quickly and taken down rather quickly so the museum can continue being a museum,” McLane said. “It was mostly trompe l’oeil.
Inside the dinner in the Temple of Dendur pavilion.
Despite the scramble to install in time, McLane is happy with how the decor turned out and even enjoyed the process.
“Installing something in the Met in the midst of all this incredible artwork always seems a little surreal,” he said. “Walking back and forth from spot to spot in the Met through those galleries—usually we go to those galleries to look at the artwork. To get a chance to work there feels like an enormous privilege.”
Annie Goldsmith is the senior editor and digital lead at ELLE Decor, where she covers design, culture, style, and trends. She previously held positions at The Information, covering technology and culture, and Town & Country, writing about news, entertainment, and fashion. Her work has also appeared in Vogue, Rolling Stone, and the SF Standard.
