It’s that time of year again—the first Monday in May when we all gather around our TVs, our iPads, our laptops, our phones (often all four simultaneously) to watch famous people walk up the stairs in extraordinary outfits. Covering the Met Gala in person is on my career goals list, so I can’t judge too hard. But I can judge a little. And I have a lot of thoughts.
This year’s theme was “Costume Art,” with a dress code of “Fashion Is Art” — an idea so broad that it technically excuses anything. Wear a gown? Fashion is art. Glue a pirate ship to your head? Fashion is art. Age yourself 53 years in prosthetics and arrive via DeLorean? Fashion. Is. Art.
The co-chairs were Beyoncé — returning to the carpet after a full decade away — Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour, who wore an outfit she has worn before. Before we get to the looks, though, we need to talk about everything else.
1. Bezos, Zuck, and Madame X
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos were this year’s honorary chairs after reportedly dropping $10 million to sponsor the event, which helped the gala raise a record $42 million. People were quick to point out the irony: Amazon is one of the primary drivers of the fast-fashion economy that has systematically devalued the garment industry that the Met Gala exists to celebrate. Amazon Web Services also provides cloud infrastructure to ICE, which is what fueled Taraji P. Henson’s now-viral “WTF ARE WE DOING” Instagram comment two days before the event. So going into the night, there was already some tension abrewing — and night of, activists projected "Boycott the Bezos Met Gala" onto the side of his penthouse, an anti-Bezos video was playing on his building, and someone actually stormed the carpet railing and got into a fight, which is not typically part of the first Monday in May programming.
Bezos himself skipped the carpet and slipped in through a side entrance — along with Mark Zuckerberg. That left Lauren Sánchez walked the stairs alone in Schiaparelli, in a direct homage to John Singer Sargent’s “Madame X” — a painting that caused a scandal because its subject was a shameless social climber. Coincidence? I think not!
What happened Monday night is really just a microcosm of something larger that's been happening across culture for a while now — tech money buying its way into spaces it wasn't traditionally invited to, and those spaces more or less letting it happen because the alternative is figuring out how to pay for things without it. The Met Gala is just the most photogenic version of that story.
2. Blue Ivy Carter wore Balenciaga at 14
The Met Gala usually has an 18-and-older rule, but this year, organizers made an exception for Blue Ivy Carter (14) and Sunday Rose Kidman Urban (17), both of whom attended with their mothers.
I thought they all looked beautiful, and Beyoncé was overjoyed — literally, she could not stop telling reporters. She told Vogue it felt “surreal” and “incredible to be able to share it” with Blue, and told E!’s La La Anthony that the best part of the whole night was “really just experiencing this through the eyes of Blue and being able to relax.” Very cute, but I can’t help but find it strange that Balenciaga is dressing kids after everything. Maybe that’s just me holding a grudge.
3. Everyone’s so skinny and I hate it.
The Ozempic situation. I’m going to say it because everyone is thinking it — the carpet was noticeably, collectively, photographably thin this year in a way that went well beyond Met Gala baseline. Last year people were already calling it the Ozempic Olympics, and this year it somehow got more pronounced, with Olivia Wilde, Maude Apatow, Nicole Kidman, Tate McRae, and Gracie Abrams among the names people were talking about the morning after — all showing up looking significantly slimmer than they have in recent memory, in some cases dramatically so.
What’s funny is that the theme of the night was literally about celebrating the human form, the dressed body as a site of artistic expression, and the overall visual effect of the carpet read less like a celebration and more like a competition nobody was officially entering but everyone was clearly playing.
4. There were so many female athletes!
If you’ve been paying any attention to women’s sports over the last two years, you know there’s a ton of momentum — and last night night was the clearest visual proof of it yet. Venus Williams co-chaired the event. A’ja Wilson was on the host committee. Lindsey Vonn walked the carpet just three months after a traumatic leg fracture at the Winter Olympics that required multiple surgeries without crutches. Alyssa Liu stunned as always. So did Paige Bueckers and Angel Reese.
Other things that caught my attention
Rachel Zegler wore Prabal Gurung and recreated the execution blindfold from Paul Delaroche’s 19th-century painting of Lady Jane Grey, which was genuinely one of the most interesting art references of the night. Conceptually: a ten. But what was up with her compulsive and bizarre jaw movements? Was it an artistic choice? Was she in pain from chronic TMJ? Was she skiing (prob in the back with Charli XCX and Hudson Williams)? Has someone checked on her??
Sarah Paulson showing up “blinded by money” — a dress from a collection literally called “The One Percent,” with leather dollar bill designs over her eyes. The label, Matières Fécales, describes the collection as a reflection on “greed, corruption, and extreme power.” In other words: she came to a Jeff Bezos gala wanting to make a political statement that I felt was a bit overstated but she tried it.
Blake Lively settled her lawsuit against Justin Baldoni the morning of the Met, showed up in a pretty beautiful archival Versace with a 13-foot train and a bag made from her kids’ artwork that represented, according to her, “the closing of one day and the beginning of another.” Interestingly, she was guest of Anna Wintour, meaning she didn’t pay the usual 100,000 invitation fee (unless brought as the guest of a designer) — pretty clear where Vogue stands in Lively’s year-long cancellation.
Stevie Nicks made her Met Gala debut at 77 in Zara x John Galliano that looks like something she always wears, but that’s okay. I wish I could’ve been a fly on the wall to hear her perform “Landslide” with Sabrina Carpenter inside the museum. Sigh.
A rundown on all the looks
Yup
✓ Emma Chamberlain in custom Mugler
My favorite look of the night. The dress was hand-painted over 40 hours by artist Anna Deller-Yee using 30 base colors, drawing on watercolor, Van Gogh, Munch, and Emma’s own father, who is an oil painter. Her body became a canvas — literally, that was the concept — and it worked completely. She said “I’m loving me looking like me in this gown,” which is such a specific kind of confidence that I want to bottle it. She’s been getting better at this every year and this was her most fully realized look yet. Her sixth Met. A ten.
✓ Sabrina Carpenter in Dior
A dress made of actual celluloid film strips from the Audrey Hepburn movie Sabrina. Obsessed.
✓ Heidi Klum as a marble statue
Was it as bizarre as her annual Halloween costume? Yes. But was it iconic and, most importantly, on theme? Also yes. Inspired by Raffaele Monti’s 19th-century sculpture “Veiled Vestal,” the…unit was made of foam latex molded to her entire body, painted vein by vein, sealed with iridescent spray to mimic the reflective quality of real marble. It took four to five hours to apply, which for some reason doesn’t sound as crazy as I expected. Apparently inside, she played pranks on guests inside by standing perfectly still until they walked past her, then moving. I can’t with this woman. She even got a nod from A$AP Rocky, who said it was the coolest outfit of the night.
✓ Beyoncé in Olivier Rousteing
Though she looked insanely uncomfortable and the get-up looked impossible to move around in, I have to give this look its flowers due to how impressive it is. The rhinestone gown referenced Caroline Durieux’s painting “The Visitor,” with a feathered cape and a Chopard necklace reportedly worth $50 million, cut from a singular 342-carat diamond called the Queen of Kalahari. The dress itself contained 300 carats of diamonds total and 318,000 stitches of embroidery. Goddamn.
✓ Chase Infiniti in Thom Browne
This one was INSANE— a trompe l’oeil gown inspired by the Venus de Milo, made with 1.5 million stacked sequins and tiered silk fringes in over 600 different colors layered to mimic brushstrokes. She was Oscar-snubbed for One Battle After Another earlier this year, but she is clearly not going to let anyone forget she exists.
✓ Colman Domingo in custom Valentino
Patchwork color, texture, and dimension woven into a jacket, with a Boucheron diamond-paved cuff and an Omega watch. He is a veteran of the best-dressed list at this point and he earns it every single time. Never mails it in. Never will.
✓ Kendall and Kylie
They usually disappointment me, but this time they delivered. Kylie’s Schiaparelli by Daniel Roseberry featured a nude illusion corset bustier with faux nipple details on top and a voluminous, heavily embroidered cream ball gown skirt below — designed to look like the dress is halfway in the process of being pulled on. I thought that illusion was achieved, and then some. The embroidery alone took 11,000 hours and 10,000 natural baroque pearls. She also bleached her eyebrows, which I guess is what people do these days, and is struggling to get them back. Fashion is pain, I guess!
Kendall’s GapStudio by Zac Posen on the other hand was inspired by the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the ancient headless Greek statue of Nike that’s been at the Louvre since 1884, rendered in liquid jersey hand-dyed in tea to give it that worn, lived-in quality. I thought it was a bit lame at first, until I saw this shot and WOW.
Meh
Nicole Kidman in Chanel
800 hours of handcraft, ruby-hued sequins and feathers, Matthieu Blazy’s first collection as Chanel’s creative director. The detail work was genuinely incredible up close. But something about it read more “beautiful gown” than “Met Gala moment.” For a theme this rich, and a debut this significant, I wanted more of a statement.
Kim Kardashian in Allen Jones and Whitaker Malem
So it was a fiberglass breastplate and leather skirt made in collaboration with British pop artist Allen Jones, and the concept is genuinely interesting — wearable sculpture, fashion as fine art collaboration — and on paper it checks every box of the theme. In practice she looked physically uncomfortable the entire time, not in a fashion-is-challenging way, more in a please-someone-bring-me-a-chair way.
Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams in Saint Laurent
These two are everywhere and I refuse to complain about it. But…
Absolutely not
✗ Katy Perry in Stella McCartney
A mirrored fencing mask covering her entire face. Cigarette burn-like holes on the train. A silver grill revealed when she finally removed the mask halfway up the stairs. The Magician tarot card. All of it was weird, and felt like she was trying to remind us she went to space. As if we could forget, Katy.
✗ Doja Cat in Saint Laurent
Doja Cat is on the host committee, was the April Vogue cover, and has delivered some genuinely unhinged and wonderful Met Gala looks in the past — the 2023 full cat transformation being the obvious benchmark. So a head-to-toe nude silicone draped gown, skin-matched down to her shoes which were painted by an SFX artist to blend into her body, sounds interesting on paper. And the concept — inspired by the way fabric drapes over Greek statues, the idea of the dress becoming the body — is coherent enough. But in practice it just read as beige. Very expensive, very intentional, very beige. And sticky. And cheap! For someone with her track record and her committee title this year, I expected to be more surprised.
✗ Bhavitha Mandavain in Chanel
I don’t understand why genius designer Matthieu Blazy put one of the modeling world’s breakout stars in…jeans? And yes, I know that it was haute coutoure made from ultra-fine silk, but it was still jeans. Chanel did her dirty and I need someone to say it.
✗ Lena Dunham in Valentino
Blood-splattered red feathers that veiled half her face? She wasn’t wearing that monstrosity, it was wearing her.
This is right in the money