Met Gala 2021 will require attendees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, wear masks indoors

After a no-show in 2020 due to the pandemic, one of fashion industry’s biggest nights – The Met Gala will be taking place in September this year. 

Since the pandemic is still on and the possibility of the Delta variant of spreading looms large, the organisers of the upcoming fashion event is enforcing strict COVID-19 vaccination mandate for all its attendees.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Vogue’s annual Met Gala will take place on September 13 in New York. 

“Currently, all attendees at The Met Gala on September 13 must provide proof of full vaccination and will also be expected to wear masks indoors except when eating or drinking,” a spokesperson for The Met confirmed to PEOPLE. “We will update these guidelines as needed.”

The theme for the star-studded event this year is ‘In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.’

In order to adhere to safety protocols, the Metropolitan Museum of Art confirmed in April that the annual fashion event will take place in two parts.

The museum’s exhibition will have series of events celebrating American fashion. Part one, titled ‘In America: A Lexicon of Fashion,’ will debut on September 18, 2021 and run through September 5, 2022 to “celebrate The Costume Institute’s 75th anniversary and explore a modern vocabulary of American fashion,” the release states.

Part two, ‘In America: An Anthology of Fashion,’ will open on May 5, 2022 and “will explore the development of American fashion by presenting narratives that relate to the complex and layered histories of those spaces.” It will also close on September 5, 2022.

Filmmaker Melina Matsoukas has been commissioned to create an open-ended film to project in the galleries, with content changing during the course of the exhibition.