News Awards & Events Met Gala The Met Announces 2017 Costume Institute Gala Theme: Comme des Garçons’s Rei Kawakubo By Lara Walsh Lara Walsh Lara Walsh is a Chicago-based writer and editor who covers all things fashion, celebrity, pop culture, travel, and food. When she’s not avidly planning her next trip, she’s writing posts for her travel blog or mapping out her next foodie adventure. InStyle's editorial guidelines Updated on October 21, 2016 @ 09:30AM Pin Share Tweet Email Photo: Catwalking/Getty The 2017 Met Gala will be quite a departure from this past year's "Manus x Machina" and 2015's "China: Through the Looking Glass" exhibitions. On Friday the Metropolitan Museum of Art revealed that Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons will be the focus of the 2017 gala, the first show since 1983's Yves Saint Laurent exhibit to focus on a single living designer. The Costume Institute's curator Andrew Bolton told The New York Times he had been wanting to put on a Kawakubo show for years, and that he hopes this show will lead the way for similar exhibits in the future to demonstrate that "fashion is a living art." The Costume Institute gala will be helmed by celebrity co-hosts Pharrell Williams and Katy Perry on May 1 and will feature 120 of Kawakubo's Comme des Garçons pieces from the beginning of her career in 1981 right up to her recent shows. And because the forward-thinking designer is well-known for bending the boundaries with her clothing lines, Mr. Bolton has a challenge for guests at the gala. PHOTOS: See the 2016 Met Gala Red Carpet Arrivals "I hope there will be a lot of avant-garde fashion," he said. "I would love for mistakes to happen."