Gala Benefits - fashion's Oscars now has its own feature film

The Met Gala has been transformed from a dusty, fusty benefit into a celebrity-packed multi-million netting extravaganza. As a documentary is released Stateside documenting last year's preparations, and the finishing touches are made to the latest installment, Alexander Fury dissects the most important night of fashion's year.

Met Curator Andrew Bolton in "The First Monday in May", a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Picture.

Each year, on the first Monday in May, the Costume Institute of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art throws a party.

The reasoning behind it is threefold: to launch the institution's major spring exhibition (this time round, the big idea is "Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology"); to generate publicity around that opening, and spike visitor numbers; and to raise funds for the museum.

It sounds simple, but is anything but. The event is officially the Met Gala, but over the past few years has begun to be referred to colloquially as the Oscars of the East Coast. The fashion author and commentator André Leon Talley, who worked at the Met in the seventies under special consultant and style doyenne Diana Vreeland, dubs it "the Super Bowl of social fashion events," but the latter limitations have been eschewed. Today, the Met Gala is as much about celebrity as it is about style.

Many people will assume that is its only reason for existence - in the same way that, at base, the Academy Awards are about an industry collectively patting itself on the back for its achievements. Far from it. "It is the major fundraiser for our department," says Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute's Curator in Charge, via telephone. "When the Costume Institute was formed, it was with the understanding that the fashion community would support it.

We are the only department in the museum that raises its own funds, in terms of our operation costs, staffing, and also funding for our exhibitions." That amounts to millions - in 2014, almost $12 million dollars (over £8 million) was generated by the event, by ticket sales to the fashion community. Each ticket costs $25,000 (the price was hiked in 2014) - a table for ten can set you back between $175,000 and $250,000. Then again, New York businesses pull in big bucks (Calvin Klein's 2014 retail was in excess of £5.6 billion).

The Met Gala, in various names and forms, has been in existence since the forties, but over the past twenty years it has been spearheaded by  Anna Wintour, editor in chief of American Vogue - a post also held, coincidentally, by Vreeland in the sixties, prior to joining the Met in 1972. Wintour had been a co-chair of eighteen Met Galas in total - her first was in 1995 - and success has been stratospheric. The collision of fashion and celebrity at the Met is mirrored in the pages of Vogue - a dazzling array of covergirl co-chairs have drawn crowds to goggle, both online and in person.

This year, Taylor Swift is the pull, alongside Idris Elba, Louis Vuitton's Nicolas Ghesquière, Karl Lagerfeld, Miuccia Prada and Apple's chief design officer, Jonathan Ive, a nod to the technological theme. Apple are also sponsors of the exhibition, another area where Vogue's involvement in pulling in key supporters has been key. The magazine's Director of Special Events, Sylvana Durrett, oversees the planning and execution of the gala -  including table and ticket sales, fundraising, decor, the menu and catering, seating, and entertainment. Last year, Rihanna performed.