Met Gala 2025: No garlic, no selfie and no free entry, here's what else is not allowed at the event

The most-awaited Met Gala 2025 is already here, creating much anticipation as who will impress us and who will shock us, providing enough meme materials for a few days. Set to take place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the star-studded red carpet with avant-garde fashion statements has a few of the Indian celebs walking the ramp, with the biggest ones being Shah Rukh Khan, Diljit Dosanjh and Kiara Advani , who are making their Met Gala debut this year. But did you know this popular fashion event, is a closed-door affair with a strict schedule?

What are the rules for Met Gala 2025?

This year’s Met Gala theme, “Tailored for You,” coincides with The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute’s new exhibition, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style. While the exhibit highlights the rich history and cultural significance of Black Dandyism, it will also focus on tailoring and the contributions of Black designers. There's a private tour of the exhibition before an exclusive dinner and a live performance. Boss lady Anna Wintour, along with the event’s chair, decides everything from the seating arrangement to behaviour expectations as well as food choices for the over 400 high-profile guests. Here are some of the many strict rules of the Met Gala 2025.

No phones or selfies allowed

Even though high-profile celebrities and social media stars grace the Met Gala red carpet, we would never see Instagram stories or TikTok videos from inside the Met, and that’s because phones are a big no-no within the event. The private tours, dinner and performances are not supposed to be filmed in full or distributed to the public, but even after strict enforcement, the ‘no phones’ rule often gets broken, even by celebrities, who share sneak peeks from the event.

No garlic, onion or parsley

Anna ensures that the guests attending the most important fashion night of the year must look and smell their best, which leads to the ban of food items like garlic, onion and parsley from the Met Gala’s dinner menu in order to prevent bad breath and poor photos. While onion-garlic-less food will ensure no one has a lingering onion breath, dishes without parsley will make sure that nobody has herbs stuck in their teeth when they smile for photos. Messy dishes like bruschetta are also not offered to guests to prevent food spillages on their extravagant dresses.

Smoking is a big no-no

Once inside the gala event, even the most powerful and stylish people aren’t allowed to smoke. The reason behind is that the curated collection of clothes at the museum could get damaged or have a smell of smoke. TV personality Gayle King once asked curator Andrew Bolton about the one thing a celebrity could do to ensure that they are never invited back, and he replied that smoking in the galleries was the biggest mistake to make. However, many celebrities have figured out a workaround and often choose to smoke in the washrooms

However popular a celebrity you might be, there's no free entry

It might be surprising to many but celebrities and A-listers really have to pay a bomb to grab a seat at the Met Gala. Even though the event is strictly an invite-only affair, there's a price attached to each seat and table. The Met Gala is a fundraising event for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the reason why it was started in the first place. The earnings go towards preserving its fashion collection that is 700 years old. According to last year's reports, an individual ticket cost $75,000 and an entire table cost $350,000. Usually, the fashion houses, whose clothes are worn by the celebrities, cover the cost of the seats in return for their work being showcased on the red carpet.

Outfits are AWOK

If you get a Met Gala invite and shell out the large ticket cost, you still will face more hurdles to get to the exclusive event as Anna Wintour herself approves outfits. The practice is so common, it even has its own acronym, AWOK or as the full form goes “Anna Wintour Okay”

How is the seating plan?

Even if you pay $75,000 for a seat, you cannot choose your seat. According to sources, a lot of planning and thought goes into deciding who will sit where and next to whom. Quite interestingly, spouses are never seated next to each other, and instead people are encouraged to mingle. People's equations with those sitting next to them or if they have a prior relationship is also considered while deciding the seating arrangement. This is such an important part of the event that organisers begin putting together the seating map as early as December.