>> Rumors of slashed budgets and diminished celebrity attendance have already plagued the 2010 Costume Institute Gala for months, but we've finally got some concrete details about the first Met Ball that recently-appointed Vogue director of special events Sylvana Soto-Ward will spearhead.  Themed "American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity," the gala will take place on Monday, May 3, 2010, with Gap's Patrick Robinson and Oprah Winfrey co-hosting alongside Anna Wintour.

The theme is already drawing questions of whether Michelle Obama will make an appearance, but for sure populating the exhibit are roughly 75 outfits, culled based on the idea of "how the American woman initiated style revolutions that mirrored her social, political, and sexual emancipation."  The pieces include designs by Coco Chanel, Jeanne Lanvin, Elsa Schiaparelli, Madeleine Vionnet, Madame Gres, and Paul Poiret and come exclusively from the new Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection; many haven't been on view to the public in over 30 years.

>> Even More Concerns About the Costume Institute Gala's Future Surface —The 2010 Costume Institute Gala rumors keep coming, and we don't even have a theme yet.  There will supposedly be slashed budgets and less star power — both celebrity and designer-wise — and a newly-appointed Vogue director of special events, Sylvana Soto-Ward, to oversee it all.  But the reservations don't stop there: According to an insider, Soto-Ward has never done any big event planning: "Sylvana didn't even plan her own engagement party — Anna Wintour had the in-house events team produce it for her. They've even pushed out [former director of special events] Stephanie [Winston Wolkoff]'s assistant and hired a consultant and some other assistants to operate as the real workhorses and pick up the slack." A Vogue spokesperson voiced no concern: "Anna has every confidence in Sylvana, and when anyone new comes in, departments are restructured." [NY Post]

>> In the wake of Stephanie Winston Wolkoff's resignation last week from her position as Vogue's director of special events — where she helped grow the Costume Institute Gala from a charity function to the "East Coast Oscars" — rumors about the fate of the Vogue-sponsored Costume Institute Gala continue to circulate, despite a denial of any changes from a museum spokesperson: "This is completely untrue, and Vogue's role is unchanged."

Sylvana Soto-Ward, who started at Vogue as Anna Wintour's assistant in 2003 and has recently been functioning as the magazine's accessories editor, inherited Winston Wolkoff's position earlier this week, the Costume Institute Gala planning and rumored slashed event budgets along with it.

Two insiders say: "The 2010 Costume Institute Gala will be a much less splashy affair" »

>> INSIDER WIRE —Vogue accessories editor Sylvana Soto-Ward has been doing a little event planning of the personal kind — she's getting married in Portland in August — and Anna Wintour must have liked what she saw.  Soto-Ward, who has acted as ambassador for the magazine in a number of its online red carpet videos, just got promoted to be the magazine's director of special events, with the Costume Institute Gala among her new responsibilities.  So the question becomes: How will she handle the gala with all the slashed budgets for next year? [WWD]

>> On Friday, it was announced that Vogue's director of special events, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, had resigned with no replacement named. Today, Fashion Week Daily reports that insiders are buzzing about the future of the Costume Institute Gala — Winston Wolkoff organized the event for the past decade.

According to one source, "Events budgets have been slashed across the board at Conde. The Costume Institute has got to be the company's most expensive event, and Stephanie built it into what it is today. It makes no sense to pass it off to someone else."

This year's event brought in $2 million less than the previous year, with a number of fashion brands declining to sponsor tables due to the economy.  At this time last year, we already had clues about the designer co-host and theme for the upcoming Costume Institute Gala, but so far, there has been nothing about the 2010 event.  FWD suggests that "perhaps just cocktails are in order," but the Gala is still Anna Wintour's party, and it doesn't seem like her to let go without a fight.