00:00This is my favorite day of the year and also my most terrifying one, even several decades in.
00:08I sometimes hear it's sad that my first Met Gala was in 1995, but that isn't true.
00:15I first came here in 1982, when I was a fashion editor at New York Magazine, and Mrs. Freeland led
00:24the Costal Institute.
00:26My salary was such that I could barely afford a dress, much less a ticket.
00:32But my editor generously paid my way into the Great Hall, which in those days, where one could stand to
00:40be on hand as the celebrities exited their dinner.
00:43In other words, the cheap seats.
00:46I was thrilled. I went to Bergdorf's, I shot my eyes, and I bought a beautiful Saint Laurent cocktail dress
00:53for $900 several times in my rent.
00:56I was a nobody that night.
00:58But it meant the world to me, a foreigner who had arrived in New York not so long before, to
01:05be part of something so important to the city, and to the daunting world of fashion where I was making
01:12my way.
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