No garlic, no smoking, no selfies: Wildest Met Gala 2025 rules you never knew existed

Fashion's most anticipated night, the 2025 Met Gala, is taking place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. While the star-studded red carpet with avant-garde fashion statements is the most popular feature of event, the rest of the Met Gala is a closed door affair with a strict schedule.

This year’s theme, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” coincides with the The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute’s new exhibition. The exhibit highlights the rich history and cultural significance of Black Dandyism, with a 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. Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue and the event’s chair, decides everything from the seating arrangement to behavior 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 never see Instagram stories and TikTok videos from inside the Met. That’s because there’s a very strict ‘no phones’ policy within the event.

The private tours, dinner and performances are not filmed in full or distributed to the public. While strictly enforced, the ‘no phones’ rule often gets broken even by celebrities who share sneak peeks from the event even though most selfies are clicked primarily in the bathroom.

2. No parsley, no onion, no garlic

Anna Wintour ensures that the Met Gala is the most important fashion night of the year and that includes the guests looking and smelling their best. Certain food items are banned from the Met Gala’s dinner menu in order to prevent bad breath and poor photos. No onion, garlic, or parsley can be found in the food to ensure no one has a lingering onion breath or has herbs stuck in their teeth when they smile for photos. Messy dishes like bruschetta aren't offered to guests to prevent food spillages on their extravagant dresses.

3. No smoking

Once inside the Met, even the most powerful and stylish people in the world aren’t allowed to smoke. The curated collection of clothes on show could get damaged or have a smell of smoke, so smoking is prohibited inside the Met Gala.

TV personality Gayle King had 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 top mistake to make. However, many celebrities have figured out a workaround and often choose to smoke in the toilets.

4. No free entry

It might be surprising to many but celebrities and A-listers actually have to pay for their seats at the Met Gala. Even though the event is strictly an invite-only affair, there's a price attached to each seat and table.

It is often forgotten but the Met Gala is a fundraising event for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so the earnings go towards preserving its fashion collection that is seven centuries old.

According to Time, in 2024, 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.

5. Outfits are pre-approved

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

6. Seating plan

Even if you pay $75,000 for a seat, you cannot chose where to sit at the Met Gala. According to Ward Durrett, director of special projects at Vogue, a lot of planning and thought goes into deciding who sits where and next to whom. 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. The task is so important that organisers begin putting together the seating chart as early as December.