The 2021 Met Gala centered on the way that fashion has played a role in historical moments of American life, as well as the way that it shifted in light of a global pandemic. Now, the 2022 event is getting a bit more specific by focusing on a particular era in American fashion.

The dress code, “Gilded Glamour and White Tie,” pays homage to the Gilded Age of New York that stretched between 1870 and 1890. Throughout the night, red-carpet watchers might expect to see plenty of corsets, bustles, extravagant trains, and over-the-top textures, which is how upper-class women at the time dressed practically every day.

“It is very embellished, very exaggerated, very structured," curator and fashion historian Kate Strasdin told CNN about the Gilded Age. “It feels so upholstered compared to the way that we think about dress now."

Following the red carpet event, which takes pace on Monday, May 2, the Met will open the exhibition “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” in the period rooms of its American Wing on Thursday, May 5. Although the new collection is different from the September exhibit, the museum’s team intends to combine the two seamlessly.

“Fashion is both a harbinger of cultural shifts and a record of the forces, beliefs, and events that shape our lives,” said Max Hollein, the Marina Kellen French Director of The Met. “This two-part exhibition considers how fashion reflects evolving notions of identity in America and explores a multitude of perspectives through presentations that speak with powerful immediacy to some of the complexities of history. In looking at the past through this lens, we can consider the aesthetic and cultural impact of fashion on historical aspects of American life.”