Apple ventures into fashion industry with its first Met Gala

Apple has partnered with the Metropolitan Museum Art and Costume Institute to back this year's Met Gala. The annual event is held to raise funds for the institute in New York.

The Met Ball marks the grand opening of the Costume Institute's annual fashion exhibit and is known for its theme that dictates what attendees are allowed to wear during the event. Coincidentally, the theme for this year's event is "Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology". The event's co-chairs include Taylor Swift, Anna Wintour, Jonathan Ive and Idris Elba.

Director and CEO of the Met Ball, Thomas P. Campbell, said in a statement in October 2015: "Fashion and technology are inextricably connected, more so now than ever before. It is therefore timely to examine the roles that the handmade and the machine-made have played in the creative process. Often presented as oppositional, this exhibition proposes a new view in which the hand and the machine are mutual and equal protagonists."

The Costume Institute hosted a preview of the event on 15 February, which was attended by Apple design head Jonathan Ive, who said, "Far from being mutually exclusive notions, we believe that technology and craft go hand in hand — much like beauty and utility — and become all the more powerful in combination," the Verge reported.

The 2016 Met Gala will showcase designers like Chanel, Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent and Iris van Herpen, who would display a range of apparel, which is likely to be a fusion between technology and fashion. The event is slated to take place on 2 May, while the exhibit will run from 5 May to 14 August.

Apple forayed into the fashion world following the launch of its wearable device, the Apple Watch. In efforts to carve out a niche for itself in the fashion industry, Apple is sponsoring the upcoming Met Gala.