About 5 p.m. on Monday, the exhibitionistic artist and brewing heiress Daphne Guinness spent around 5 minutes getting dressed in the windows at Barneys in progress of the big Costume Institute Gala. Ms. Guinness was a supporter of Alexander McQueen, the late designer to whom the show at the Met is devoted this year.
Outside the department store, a robust smattering of people collected to watch Ms. Guinness do her thing inside a shadowy, muslin-lined box. It served as a public pregathering to what is often referred to as the Party of the Year, where tickets cost as often as some inexpensive cars.
"See, every girl has to fight with a zipper," said one commentator as Ms. Guinness shimmied in the shadows into her feather dress, then quickly hopped into a vintage Mercedes convertible.
But Ms. Guinness's act was likewise a duplicate to what happens at said Company of the Year, where the extremely select few (mostly handpicked and polished by the evening's sponsor, Vogue, and its editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour) get to look and everyone else, if they occur to care, is stuck peering in the window.
At 6:26 at the Met, Ms. Wintour assumed her place with the actor Colin Firth for the receiving line. The fashion designer Stella McCartney joined it soon after.
In the background, a pianist was playing versions of Michael Jackson hits, including "Thriller." Then Ms. Guinness came bounding up the stairs.
"How was it in the window?" Ms. Wintour asked her.
"It's like being received by the Queen," the actor Joshua Jackson told his girlfriend, the actress Diane Kruger, of his interaction with Ms. Wintour. "She really made eye contact with me so I feel like I'm moving up in the world."
Soon much of young starlets showed up-they keep getting younger every year. This work included Saoirse Ronan; Elle and Dakota Fanning, who said she'll be passing to college in the fall; Emma Roberts; Emma Stone; Leighton Meester; Freida Pinto; Dianna Agron and Taylor Swift.
Then there were the social ladies. "You look gorgeous," Julie Macklowe said to Alexandra Kotur.
"No, you look gorgeous," someone else said to Ms. Macklowe.
"I'm going to consider how many times I see my dress tonight," said Jamie Tisch who already spotted Plum Sykes in the same McQueen red off the rack gown. "I'm expecting to see four."
Then there were the wild cards, like Ryan Murphy, the lord of "Glee," MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch, the "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest, the pop singer Bruno Mars, Yoko Ono and the comedian Amy Poehler.
"Everything is hunky-dory," said Ms. Poehler in blue J. Mendel.
"Let's have some noise and get drunk," Gwyneth Paltrow told Marc Anthony.
The show itself, somewhere between haunted mansion and a spaceship, had its bottleneck of gawkers, including Jeff Koons who went through with Kanye West, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Lopez, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Claire Danes and Lea Michele. Among the strange, exquisite pieces on display was a quotation from Mr. McQueen.
It read: "It's the frightful things I find more, because other people tend to neglect the frightful things."
There weren't many horrible things in attendance Monday, except, perhaps, the feathers various dresses had cast on the carpets. Said Mr. Seacrest on the way out of the introduction and down to dinner, "It all seemed like art, but I give to differentiate you, there's a lot I don't understand." (bitch please)
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