Met Gala opens in breathtaking fashion but big names including Kylie Jenner are no-shows

Singer Billie Eilish has gone full glam in a huge peach ball gown at the pandemic-delayed Met Gala, while fellow host of the evening Amanda Gorman was breathtaking in blue custom Vera Wang with a diamond laurel wreath in her hair.

The official theme of the fundraisers for the New York museum’s Costume Institute was “American Independence,” leaving plenty of room for interpretation.

Gala overseer Anna Wintour arrived early with a wave to the crowd accompanied by her pregnant daughter, Bee, in a floral design with ruffles at the neck.

The gala, which raises money for the museum’s Costume Institute, was pushed last year from its traditional May berth and morphed this year into a two-part affair.

It coincides with the opening of “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion,” the first of a two-part exhibition at the Met’s Anna Wintour Costume Center.

Organisers invited 400 guests, or about a third the number that usually attend.

The two-part gala marks the Costume Institute’s 75th anniversary. The Met Gala raises the bulk of the institute’s annual funding, including a larger gathering scheduled for May 2.

That date reclaims the first Monday in May for the gala and will celebrate the exhibition’s second part, “In America: An Anthology of Fashion,” in the period rooms of the museum’s American Wing.

Considered fashion’s biggest night, A-list guests from music, film, TV, tech and beyond are encouraged to embrace the theme of the new exhibition each year as they slowly make their way up the museum’s red-carpeted stairs. Interpretation is everything when it comes to how they dress - and how they enter.

The Met Gala - short for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Gala - raised more than $US13 million ($A18 million) in 2019 for the Costume Institute, which is the Met’s fashion department.

It is the museum’s only curatorial department that has to fund itself and has an important friend in Wintour, who tends the guest list. She has raised so much money for the Costume Institute over the years (with estimates up to $US200 million ($A271 million) that the wing now bears her name.

Tickets cost $US30,000 ($A40,700)-plus, but that doesn’t mean the stars ante up. They’re often hosted by brands and companies that buy tables for thousands more and are accompanied by top designers who dress them.