Here's what you need to know about the Karl Lagerfeld-themed 2023 Met Gal

Get ready for the World Cup of fashion! The fundraiser to end all fundraisers, the Met Gala, is set to take place the first Monday in May, and if past years are any indication, celebrities, designers, and philanthropists will shake up the red carpet with their outlandish and fierce haute couture creations for a night of glamourous debauchery. 

Last year's Met Gala theme, "Gilded Glamour," received a bit of criticism from fans for being too open-ended, but now we know the 2023 theme, and it’s honouring one of the powerhouse legends of fabric and runway: the late Karl Lagerfeld. "Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty," will pay tribute to the late designer and icon's contributions to the fashion world, and the dress code invites guests to dress as an homage to the late designer 

The co-chairs of this year’s gala will join Vogue head honcho Anna Wintour and are a who’s-who of celebrities: actor and screenwriter Michaela Coel, actress Penelope Cruz, tennis player Roger Federer, and musician Dua Lipa. Yaaaas, we are levitating!

Lagerfeld's life and legacy will be part of the accompanying exhibition. On top of designing for his own brand, he also designed for Chanel, Chloe, Fendi, Balmain, and Patou. He is mostly credited for taking over Chanel when it was close to folding and bringing it back to the fashion world thriving and with stellar collections. 

Lagerfeld died in 2019 of pancreatic cancer.

While we don’t know yet which celebrities will be in attendance or what outlandish fashion choices they might make (or if, you know, Sandra Bullock is going to break in and steal a necklace…), we do know that some celebs are not too jazzed about honouring Lagerfeld.

One of the biggest critics of the Lagerfeld theme has been The Good Place star Jameela Jamil, who took to Instagram armed with receipts to show that the late fashion designer was a bigot, a misogynist, and showed blatant discrimination toward models of different shapes.

Explaining that he targeted anyone who didn’t fit into the old mold of the fashion world, Jamil wrote in the caption that he was horrible to, “women who were sexually assaulted, the entire me too movement, gay couples who wanted to adopt, all fat people, specifically fat women, and some of his greatest harm was against Muslim refugees and the disgusting way he spoke about people fleeing their homes for fear of their lives.”

“Why is THIS who we celebrate when there are so many AMAZING designers out there who aren't bigoted white men?” she asked.

Her receipts include screencaps of interviews Lagerfeld gave during his life, one of which where he blamed models for their own sexual assault, telling them to join a nunnery. He was quoted as denigrating the bodies of both singers, Adele and Lana Del Ray.  Another more grotesque comment was targeted against Syrians fleeing the civil war and coming to Germany, where Lagerfeld said, “The greatest thing Germany ever invented was the Holocaust.”

Notably, fashionistas and fans of the Met Gala are not happy about his tribute this year.