What exactly goes into the Met Gala seating chart?

And that’s just the start of it. Kiernan and her team also fastidiously deliberate where, exactly, tables are placed in the dining room. It’s partially due to aesthetic reasons: the decor for the Met Gala changes every year, and therefore, the larger composition does too. Everyone needs to have a clear view of the stage, for example. And, well, perhaps not a clear view of their ex. “We try and think a lot about sight lines and where people have sat in the past. And we try to make sure someone isn’t staring into the eyes of a former flame,” Kiernan says.

It’s a task she approaches with the utmost planned precision. Perched on an easel in Vogue’s conference room is a massive foam-core board, affixed with individual velcro tabs. (The “Lilah labels” as Kiernan calls them, which are named in honour of their inventor, Vogue’s own Lilah Ramzi, are “virtually indestructible,” Kiernan says.)

Frances McDormand’s name tag peeks through from behind a plate at the 2018 Met Gala.

Photographed by Corey Tenold

The guest list of the Met Gala changes each year, which means the Met Gala seating chart does too. Yet Kiernan keeps an archive of every one she’s worked on, unintentionally creating a fascinating pop-culture archive in the process. “There have been quite a few versions of the seating charts over the years,” Kiernan says, laughing. “It’s fun for me to look back through them, to see who was invited, who was sitting next to whom, and to recall the collaborations that might have come out of that. They’re almost little time capsules of what was going on each year.”