Last night The Met Gala - the biggest event on the fashion calendar - returned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue for its annual Costume Institute event. Known for its bold looks and headline-making arrivals, the event challenges guests to fully embrace its theme.
This year’s theme, Costume Art, with the dress code Fashion is Art, asked attendees to treat fashion as creative expression - more like a gallery piece than an outfit. At the Met Gala, going over the top isn’t optional; it’s the point. The night is about strong ideas, visual impact, and pushing expectations.
© Penske Media via Getty ImagesWhere entrances go Madonna’s was one of the most spectacular. Proving she’s still the Queen of Pop, she wore a Saint Laurent slip dress crafted from satin and lace, with a floor-sweeping violet organza cape carried by seven ladies-in-waiting.
The pop diva, who also wore a long raven wig and a jaunty pirate ship hat, took inspiration from female painter Leonora Carrington, the surrealist who inspired her Bedtime Story music video.
For Beyoncé, one of the three beautiful co-chairs, along with Anna Wintour, it was her first Met Gala appearance in a decade. She looked to close friend and collaborator Olivier Rousteing, the former creative director of Balmain, to create her bejewelled skeleton gown. She was accompanied by husband Jay-Z and their eldest daughter Blue Ivy, whose first Met appearance at 14 broke the strict age limit.
© Getty Images for The Met Museum/With tickets reportedly costing an eye-watering $100,000, A-listers tend to take on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s famous steps solo - unless, of course, they’re part of one of music’s ultimate power couples, like the Knowles-Carters or Rihanna and A$AP Rocky.
The latter duo didn’t disappoint. Styled by Jahleel Weaver, Rihanna wore a custom Maison Margiela by Glenn Martens gown, embellished with over 115,000 crystal beads, antique jewels and chains. The look drew inspiration from medieval architecture found in Flanders, Belgium. Alongside her, Rocky looked sharp in a pink Chanel smoking jacket.
© Getty Images for The Met Museum/While Rih and Rocky arrived fashionably late, Anna Wintour, the global chief content officer of Condé Nast and the event’s chair, was one of the first to step onto the white carpet this year. She wore a turquoise Chanel gown with feathered detailing, paired, of course, with her signature black sunglasses and perfectly precise bob.
© Getty ImagesThe Met Gala would not be the glamorous event it is without Wintour’s leadership. In its nearly 80-year history, it has raised more than $113 million for the Met’s Costume Institute.
In 2014, the Costume Institute was even renamed the Anna Wintour Costume Center, cementing her influence on fashion’s most important night.
Nicole Kidman, another of the evening’s co-chairs, also turned to Chanel for her seventh Met Gala appearance. Styled by Jason Bolden, she wore a sequin and feather gown that reportedly took 800 hours to create, underscoring the craftsmanship behind the night’s most elaborate looks.
© Getty Images for The Met Museum/She was joined by her daughter with Keith Urban, Sunday Rose Kidman Urban, who made her Met Gala debut in a sugary pink Dior gown.
British model Alexa Chung wore a Dior satin halter-neck dress with a chiffon insert embroidered with a chartreuse-coloured geometric pattern. Her floral headpiece was composed of fabric lily-of-the-valley bouquets and black satin ribbons.
© Getty Images for The Met Museum/It was the Los Angeles contingent that leaned most into skin-baring silhouettes. For her 13th Met Gala appearance, Kim Kardashian collaborated with artist Allen Jones and the body-focused design duo Whitaker Malem to create a cyborg-inspired breastplate, continuing her long-running interest in sculptural, body-as-architecture fashion.
© Getty Images for The Met Museum/Her sister Kylie Jenner wore a Schiaparelli gown featuring sculpted nipple detailing and a pearl-encrusted train, pushing the house’s surrealist, anatomical aesthetic to an extreme. Schiaparelli has become known in recent seasons for this kind of provocative, illusion-based couture.
Meanwhile, Kendall Jenner worked with designer Zac Posen, now creative director at Gap Inc., who created a GapStudio look inspired by Winged Victory of Samothrace, the iconic ancient Greek statue of the goddess of victory.
© Getty Images for The Met Museum/Olivia Wilde in a Thome Brown off-the-shoulder black duchess satin corset was one of a handful of guests (including Lauren Sánchez Bezos in Schiaparelli, Claire Foy in Erdem, and Julianne Moore in Bottega Veneta) that referenced John Singer Sargent’s 1884 painting, Portrait of Madame X - by wearing a single strap dangling from the shoulder. The dress also featured a cloud of 300 meters of tulle layers.
Leading the Brit girls was model Cara Delevingne who looked stunning wearing a custom Ralph Lauren dress with a sheer back. Kate Moss, who first attended the Met Gala in 1995 wearing a minimal yellow slip, returned for the first time since 2023, when she walked the steps with her daughter, Lila Moss. She wore a black lace satin dress by Saint Laurent.
© Getty Images for The Met Museum/Lila joined her again this year. She worked with Conner Ives on a reconstituted sequin-winged gown made from three different 1920s beaded dresses.
And as for the most adventurous A-listers, the ones that took the brief more literally were Emma Chamberlain, who turned herself into a canvas wearing a hand painted Mugler by Miguel Castro Freitas dress - the brush strokes literally dripping down the length.
© Getty Images for The Met Museum/Heidi Klum also looked unrecognisable draped in a grey mottled fabric that paid homage to the Veiled Vestal by Raffaelle Monti that dates back to 1847. The party picture of her posing with Rihanna and A$AP Rocky won the night.
