Oprah Winfrey To Host Annual Fashion Gala

Oprah Winfrey will host next year’s Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute annual fashion gala, organizers said Wednesday.

The event's theme, perfect for Winfrey, is "American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity," pondering how styles from 1890-1940 have evolved into contemporary fashion.

"The ideal of the American woman evolved from a dependence on European, Old World ideas of elegance into an independent New World sensibility that reflected freedoms still associated with American women today,” the show’s curator, Andrew Bolton, said. “The show will look at fashion's role in defining how American women have been represented historically, and how fashion costumes women into archetypes that still persist in varying degrees of relevance."

This past year's Supermodel-themed show was hosted by Kate Moss and Justin Timberlake.

The New York-based show is slated for May 3, 2010.