Who is Andrew Bolton, the brains behind the Met Gala themes? The Costume Institute curator in chief is one of Anna Wintour’s best friends – and one half of ‘fashion’s royal couple’ with Thom Browne

May 10 , 2024

Kim Kardashian and Zendaya may have dominated the headlines at this year’s Met Gala, but one man was working harder than anyone behind the scenes – meet its Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton (pictured). Photo: @globestyle/Instagram

Bolton, curator in charge of the Met’s Costume Institute, is behind the museum’s most successful exhibitions of all time, including its Alexander McQueen retrospective (2011) and ‘Heavenly Bodies’ (2018)

Born in Britain, the 57-year-old began working at the Met in 2002 and took the top job in 2015, settling down in New York where he lives with American fashion designer Thom Browne

With all the fuss about Kim Kardashian’s corset or Zendaya’s nifty costume change on the world’s most OTT red carpet, it’s easy to forget that the Met Gala isn’t actually about the celebrities.

The event – often dubbed the Super Bowl of fashion – is in fact staged to raise money for the Costume Institute inside New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Home to more than 33,000 items of dress spanning 700 years, according to its website, the institute launches a new exhibition each spring – which is open for the general public to enjoy long after Cardi B has gone home.

And one man in particular is at the centre of it all – dreaming up the theme of each spectacular show and curating it to perfection. That man is Andrew Bolton. Here’s everything you need to know about the 57-year-old “approachable academic” at the heart of fashion’s biggest event.

What is the Met’s Costume Institute’s curator in charge Andrew Bolton’s background?

Andrew Bolton is the curator in charge at the Met’s Costume Institute. Photo: @sarabandefoundation/Instagram

Despite the Hollywood starriness of the Met Gala, it’s in fact two Brits who mastermind the operation each year: Vogue’s global editor Anna Wintour and Bolton. Born in Lancashire in the UK, Bolton – who’s now in his late 50s – was the youngest of three children born to a middle-class Catholic family, he told The New Yorker in 2013.

Chinese photographer Chen Man, Andrew Bolton and patron of the arts Wendy Yu together in Beijing, in 2018. Photo: @wendyyu_official/Instagram

He became obsessed with the British punk movement as a youngster, but never quite made the look work. “I went through a punky stage where I would spike my hair, but I was too clean-cut to pull it off. Whatever I did, I looked preppy,” he told the magazine. He went on to study anthropology before travelling around Asia and returning to do a master’s in non-Western art.

He began working at the Met when he was just 35

Andrew Bolton worked at London’s V&A Museum before moving across the Atlantic Ocean to NYC for a role at the Met in 2002. Photo: @outmagazine/Instagram