Please excuse us, we just returned from 20 years ago and need a moment to get our bearings.

So different and yet so familiar was the Met Gala help on April 28, 2003—which, though it was a coveted (and only $3,500) ticket, was not quite the everybody-who's-anybody occasion it soon became, eventually surpassing the Oscars as fashion's biggest night. The premiere of Keeping Up With the Kardashians was still four years away, 13-year-old Taylor Swift was furiously journaling in her childhood bedroom and TikTok was just the sound a clock makes.

But the party benefiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute was still a premiere destination, a spot for the actresses of the moment—Nicole! Kate! Charlize!—to flock with supermodels, designers, style legends, icons-to-be (Victoria Beckham, still finding her post-Spice Girls legs), and other titans of pop culture. Most of whom, by the way, are still welcome at the event Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour presides over to this day.

As is always the case no matter the dress code, some attendees fully embraced the 2003 theme, "Goddess: The Classical Mode," while others could have been going anywhere fancy (or to their own wedding, commentary from the time noting how a lot of the night's looks skewed bridal). But they all looked happy to be there, back when there was nary a smartphone in sight.

Because, frankly, this thing the stars used to carry called a PalmPilot didn't have a camera.

Scroll on and soak in the social-media-devoid vibes of the 2003 Met Gala: 

Then-Gucci creative director Tom Ford and Nicole Kidman, fresh from her Best Actress Oscar win for The Hours, joined Vogue Editor in Chief Anna Wintour as co-chairs of the 2003 Met Gala—the event's return to the calendar after it was canceled in 2002 in the wake of 9/11. The night's theme, "Goddess: The Classical Mode," was interpreted in a variety of ways, starting with Kidman looking statuesque in—what else?—Gucci by Tom Ford.

Starting in 1971, the Met Gala took place in December for three decades until it was turned into an April affair in 2001 (incidentally, after the event was also canceled in 2000 along with the planned Chanel exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute following the death of head curator Richard Martin). The first-Monday-in-May routine began in 2005, with "House of Chanel" as the years-in-the-making theme.

Kate Hudson kept the designer of her stunning Grecian-style dress, Stella McCartney, close at hand while making her Met Gala debut.

Iman's essence is basically "goddess," so the supermodel really could've worn anything and been right in keeping with the night's theme. But her dreamy white silk halter gown made her look as if she was ready to marry David Bowie all over again. Ultimately they spent 23 years as husband and wife before his death in 2016.

Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie Gyllenhaal had only been together for about a year when they attended their first Met Gala together. Twenty years and two kids later... they've put on quite a bit of red carpet mileage. 

Aughts-favorite duo Jake Gyllenhaal and Kirsten Dunst were in their early twenties but looked like a couple of kids in their salad days. And yet, the real question: Is there a baby-blue cap in a drawer somewhere at Maggie Gyllenhaal's house?

Gisele Bündchen's then-boyfriend Leonardo DiCaprio wasn't in attendance, so a relatively dressed-down Ashton Kutcher took the opportunity to stand in the supermodel's orbit for a bit.

In 2003, Edie Falco only had eyes for Stanley Tucci and what we now know is his killer Negroni.

Rachel Weisz was with Darren Aronofsky at the time and still years away from setting up a Dream House with Daniel Craig—but in any case, the Mummy star and future Oscar winner intrepidly traversed this Met Gala on her own.

Alicia Keys played her own version of the goddess theme in a white suit with a touch of sparkle.

The muses were with Sofia Coppola in her simple black slip dress, the writer-director still months away from the premiere of her critically acclaimed Lost in Translation, for which she'd win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 2004.

Diana Ross was the marquee performer inside the exclusive event.

Among the many monochromatic ensembles, it was easy to keep track of Molly Sims and her then-boyfriend, Without a Trace star Enrique Murciano.

It's only fitting that at least one of Donna Karan's grandchildren attended the Met Gala before even being born. Imminent labor wasn't going to stop Gabby Karan de Felice from enjoying date night with husband Gianpaolo de Felice, with whom she shares daughter Stefania and son Sebastian.

You couldn't stop Hairspray star Marissa Jaret Winokur from going full goddess and wearing a tiara.

Jimmy Fallon was still anchoring "Weekend Update" on Saturday Night Live when he got all dressed up on a Monday and went to the Met Gala.

Reigning Best Actor Oscar winner Adrien Brody looked like he was still thinking about that kiss he planted on Halle Berry a month earlier.

Zac Posen made sure Eva Amurri's ruffles remained just so.

What's the deal with comedians at the Met Gala? Well, if it's Jerry Seinfeld and wife Jessica, it may have been their first splashy night out since welcoming their second child, son Julian, on March 1, 2003.

One day you're in and the next day...you're still in, if you're Heidi Klum, here smiling alongside designer Valentino.

A rare Robert DeNiro Met Gala sighting occurred when he escorted his actress daughter Drena De Niro to the event. The two-time Oscar winner adopted Drea in 1976 when he married her mom, Diahnne Abbott—and though the couple divorced in 1988, Drena and her dad remained close.

Her now almost 20-year-old son Leandro De Niro Rodriguez is also in the family business, sharing the screen with his mom in A Star Is Born when they played the wife and son of Dave Chappelle's character.

Kim Cattrall was forty-f--king-six and fabulous a couple of months before the first half of Sex and the City's sixth and final season premiered.

Claire Danes made a night of it in her homeland of New York.

Still dear friends 20 years later, Selma Blair and Jaime King complemented each other perfectly even then.

The Sopranos star Jamie-Lynn Sigler walked the carpet with fiancé A.J. Discala a few months before they walked down the aisle. (The pair divorced in 2006 and she now has two children with second husband Cutter Dykstra.)

Man-about-town David Spade had a laugh with Parker Posey.

Ellen Barkin's then-husband Ronald Perelman was her date but she stole away to compare fierce black dresses over wine with Connie Nielsen.

Michael J. Fox escorted his lovely Family Ties girlfriend-turned-wife (of now almost 35 years) Tracy Pollan.

Then going by Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, the Bad Boy Records founder posed with supermodel Linda Evangelista.

Angie Harmon and Jason Sehorn seemed like a total touchdown—especially after the football player's surprise 2000 proposal on The Tonight Show went viral before YouTube existed—but they separated in 2014 after 13 years of marriage and three daughters together.

A year before they got engaged, New York real estate tycoon Donald Trump and future third wife Melania Knauss attended their first of many Met Galas together. After Trump was elected president, however, event chair Anna Wintour said on The Late Late Show With James Corden that he wouldn't be welcome at the gala again on her watch.

And visit E! Online's 2023 Met Gala page for every photo and must-see moment from fashion's biggest night.

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