Every summer, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art hosts one of the most exclusive and anticipated celebrity events of the year, the Met Gala, in support of the museum’s Costume Institute. The event was cancelled last year due to the pandemic but returned in full force this year — albeit with vaccine, testing, and mask requirements for all those in attendance.
In the past, red carpet coverage was provided by E! on television, while Vogue provided various types of behind-the-scenes content on social media. This year, as audiences spend more time than ever online and livestreams quickly become the norm, Vogue hosted its first-ever exclusive livestream coverage of the event to provide an inside look at the event for at-home audiences, including interviews with celebrities as they arrived on the steps of the Met.
The coverage was streamed to both the Met and Vogue’s websites, as well as Vogue’s Twitter page. The livestream and interviews were hosted by actresses Keke Palmer and Ilana Glazer, who were energetic and engaging interviewers for the hundreds of thousands of fans watching at home.
The livestream included polls from the audience as well as live tweets about the celebrities that Palmer and Glazer read out in real-time during interviews. As an official sponsor of the event, Instagram also provided exclusive, behind-the-scenes content such as makeup tutorials with celebrity makeup artists who created some of the night’s looks.
The Met Gala is already a heavily tweeted and Instagrammed event, and this year's livestream encouraged additional engagement and exchanges from fans who were following the event coverage online.
Vogue’s plans to livestream this year’s edition follows a growing trend — MusiCares, for example, similarly plans to broadcast their event for the first time next year to raise awareness about the organization and reach a wider audience. This will also be an increasingly appealing approach as more and more people cut the cable cord and turn to streaming options for their content.