A Met Gala Weekend at The William with Imagine’s Beauty Director Kelly Cornwell

New York changes during Met Gala weekend. The city sharpens slightly. Black SUVs line uptown streets long before the carpet begins, garment bags disappear into hotel elevators, and every restaurant conversation seems to circle back to who is dressing whom. Fashion week energy returns for forty eight hours, but with something cinematic underpinning it.

For Imagine’s Beauty Director, Kelly Cornwell – known to her celebrity clients as the Skin Queen – the trip centred around preparing actor Claire Foy for the Met Gala. Between fittings, beauty prep and the pace that surrounds the event itself, the weekend unfolded from The William, a boutique hotel tucked into Midtown East that feels deliberately removed from the noise surrounding it.

Set inside a restored Beaux Arts brownstone a short walk from Bryant Park and Grand Central, The William occupies a quieter register of Manhattan luxury. Its thirty one suites are individually designed around monochromatic colour palettes conceived with artist William Engel, balancing theatricality with restraint. One floor moves through saturated cobalt tones, another through deep crimson or emerald, each space carrying the feeling of a private apartment rather than a conventional hotel room. 

That sense of intimacy becomes especially valuable during a week when the city rarely slows down. Between preparations for the Gala and downtown meetings, Cornwell described the hotel as somewhere that allows the pace outside to soften once the door closes. Midtown can often feel functional during major fashion events, reduced to a network of car routes and appointments, but The William retains a certain old New York character. Not performative luxury, but something warmer and more personal.

The timing also placed the hotel within the wider atmosphere surrounding this year’s Met Gala. As stylists, artists and editors moved across Manhattan ahead of the museum steps opening, hotels became temporary backstage spaces in their own right. Hair teams carried kits through marble lobbies, assistants arrived balancing rails of clothing and beauty preparations stretched across long afternoons before the evening formally began. 

What makes The William particularly suited to guests travelling for work is its contrast with the scale of the city around it. Inside, lighting remains low and the space intentionally restrained. Downstairs, guests move The Shakespeare Pub and the Raines Law Room, both of which carry the feeling of long standing Manhattan institutions rather than transient hotel additions.