Tag: Met Gala 2024: Live updates from the red carpet

In February, the Met revealed Ballard’s “The Garden of Time” as the theme for tonight’s red carpet.

In the “Garden of Time,” Count Axel and his wife live in a grand villa with a sprawling walled estate. A crystalline meadow of glass-like “time flowers” spring out across the plot, while over the horizon, a whip-yielding angry mob inches closer and closer. Everyday Axel picks the head of a time flower, winding back the hours and reversing the mob’s advancement, until all the blooms are finished — an inevitability that looms large over the story’s few pages.

Since the 1950s, the British author — who died in 2009 — built an oeuvre centered almost exclusively on dystopian catastrophe. Whether the scene is a luxury high-rise apartment complex or an affluent gated community in the south of France, Ballard’s thesis remains the same: The glittering sheen of upper-middle class life is nothing but a thin veneer, seconds away from cracking.

Even if you don’t recognize his name, you are likely to have come across Ballard’s unnerving musings on human psychology. Steven Spielberg’s 1987 film “Empire of the Sun” is based on Ballard’s 1984 novel of the same name, for example, as was David Cronenberg’s 1996 adaptation of the writer’s 1974 work “Crash,” which follows a group of people sexually aroused by auto collisions. But it’s not just film — Ballard’s worldview has infiltrated art, music, architecture and fashion, perhaps more consistently than any other 20th-century author.

Click through to learn more about Ballard, and the creatives his work inspired.

Though their looks weren’t as attention-grabbing as their counterparts on the green carpet, several celebrities made impressions in suits and tuxedos with subtle nods to the night’s garden-centric theme.

Donald Glover, who recently teased new music from his rap alter ego Childish Gambino, looked relaxed in various shades of brown.

Ed Sheeran, attending with Stella McCartney, wore a powder blue suit straight out of an ’80s prom, complete with a casually undone bowtie.

Jack Harlow, on his third trip to the Met Gala, matched his mullet-in-progress with a gray-and-silver suit.

Nicolas Galitzine, who stars opposite Anne Hathaway in Amazon’s romance “The Idea of You,” wore a sharp custom Fendi tuxedo to his first Met Gala.

A blond Adrien Brody accented his otherwise standard black tuxedo with a large silver brooch.

Sebastian Stan looked relatively subdued in a black T-shirt and pants, minus his dashing coat with black sequin appliques.

Director Taika Waititi, accompanying wife Rita Ora to her 10th Met Gala, wore a monochromatic milky brown suit complete with gloves. It looks as though he was dipped in the river at Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.