The 2023 Met Gala Will Pay Homage to Karl Lagerfeld

'"Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty" follows two exhibitions on American fashion.

After rumors of a potential celestial, space-age theme for the 2023 Met Gala started to circle, the team behind the annual Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute benefit (better known as the Met Gala), announced that next year's exhibition will not be going to the cosmos. Instead, the museum will showcase a retrospective of Karl Lagerfeld's work to New York City, spanning his time at Balmain, Patou, Chloé, Fendi, Chanel, and his own label. Officially titled "Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty," the exhibit is set to open on May 1, 2023.

The Met made the announcement today in Paris from Lagerfeld's photo studio.

"Every single design in his life was a sketch," head curator Andrew Bolton told CNN. "And when I saw the drawings, I thought, 'These are so charming, so whimsical, so impressionistic.' But what I didn't realize was that they contained really precise information — about a shoulder line or the length of a sleeve. And (his staff) knew exactly what this line meant or what that dot meant, and they could decode it."

Lagerfeld passed away in February 2019. He famously said that he would never retire, telling The New York Times in a 2015 interview that he would "die on the spot."

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In 2021 and 2022, the Met Gala's themes focused on American fashion, with "In America: An Anthology of Fashion" and "In America: A Lexicon of Fashion." Though 2023's co-chairs have not been announced, names like Blake Lively, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and Amal Clooney have held the position in the past.