Madonna with seven handmaids, Beyoncé and a crystal skeleton, and a Madame X hat-trick: the Met Gala, the fashion industry’s Super Bowl, took over NYC’s Upper East Side on Monday night, bringing with it an occasion that will be remembered as much for its costumes as for controversy.
This years’s event came under heavy criticism due to the patronage of billionaire couple Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos who served as lead sponsors and honorary chairs at this year’s gala, and joined the 450 guests on the famous carpeted steps of the museum, prompting social-media users to dub it the “Amazon Prime Gala” or “Bezos Ball”. An anti-Bezos campaign mounted by the British activist group Everyone Hates Elon, erupted on New York’s streets and subways in the run up to the event. The group placed nearly 300 bottles of fake urine inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in reference to complaints made by Amazon workers about having to urinate in plastic bottles in lieu of proper breaks. Police arrested a protester accused of jumping a barricade during the event.
All eyes were on which A-listers would accept the invitation from Anna Wintour’s office to attend. Notable absences included red-carpet regular Zendaya and Devil Wears Prada star Meryl Streep who, despite sharing the May cover of American Vogue with Wintour did not attend the gala. “Meryl has been invited to the Met Gala for many years but has never attended,” Streep's rep told People magazine. “While she appreciates Vogue, Anna, and her incredible imagination and stamina – it has never quite been her scene.”
British-US fashion editor Anna Wintour arrives for the 2026 Met Gala celebrating the Costume Art exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Zohran Mamdani turned down an invitation, making him the first mayor of New York in decades to skip the gala. He took the opportunity to team up with ID magazine to spotlight six local fashion-industry professionals in portraits photographed by Kara McCurdy. These included Sonia Castrejón, an immigrant from Mexico who runs a tailoring school in her Brooklyn basement for mothers of disabled children; and former Amazon delivery employees turned Delivery Protection Act activists Latrice Johnson and Lamont Hopewell. “The fashion industry is made possible by the thousands of workers behind the scenes… whose immense talent and dedication deserves to be celebrated,” Mamdani told ID. In an interview with Hell Gate the mayor said he would be concentrating on “making the most expensive city in the United States affordable,” adding, “that's what I'm looking to spend a lot of my time focused on.”
Met Gala tickets have risen from $1,000 per ticket to a reported $100,000 during Anna Wintour’s tenure. Last year’s gala raised $31 million for the Costume Institute, making it the most successful fundraiser in the event’s history.
Madonna arrives on the brick road carpet
This year’s theme “Fashion is Art” aligns with the Met’s accompanying ”Costume Art” exhibition, which includes over 400 pieces from the museum’s collection. Showcasing fashion alongside paintings, ceramics and sculptures, it explores the concept of fashion transforming bodies through the lens of age, size, gender, and disability – demonstrating how the clothed body is central to artistic expression and representation. The red-carpet dress code was interpreted by designers, stylists and celebrities in two ways; looks that referenced artworks including statues and paintings, and looks that celebrated the body in a nod to the Met exhibition, which curator Andrew Bolton explained is dedicated to “the centrality of the dressed body in the museum’s vast collection.”
Event co-chair Beyoncé embraced the body theme in a crystal-embellished skeleton gown by longtime collaborator, ex-Balmain designer Olivier Rousteing, a look which she said celebrated all bodies “juicy, curvy, thin, tall”. Her fellow co-chairs were Nicole Kidman in blood-red Chanel sequins, and Venus Williams wearing mirrored Pucci. The host committee chairs, meanwhile, included Zoë Kravitz and Saint Laurent creative director Anthony Vaccarello, who dressed several stars – most notably Madonna who arrived in a galleon headdress with seven handmaids holding her veil, a look inspired by the surrealist painter Leonora Carrington.
Here’s our pick of the best looks from the evening.
Naomi Osaka’s the ”The Red Within” by Robert Wun was a two-part act on the red carpet. Osaka wore a sculpted ivory coat, with open seams that exposed red Swarovski crystals. Removed, it revealed a deep-red crystal gown consisting of 659,000 stitches of intricate embroidery and thousands of faceted Swarovski crystals in four shades of red, crafted through 3,280 hours of handwork.
Beyoncé returned to the Met Gala after a decade, in a diamond-encrusted, skeleton-inspired dress by Olivier Rousteing.
Hailey Bieber chose a blue-and-gold Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello look, with a 24-karat bustier moulded from her own body. It was inspired by Saint Laurent’s AW 1969 couture collection, where Yves Saint Laurent collaborated with French artist and sculptor Claude Lalanne to mould two sculpted bodices.
French singer Yseult chose a Surrealist-inspired, custom Harris Reed demi-couture look, featuring over 400 hours of glass beadwork to create a sculpted bodice – belly button and all!
Kim Kardashian’s look was created by designer/artisan duo Allen Jones and Whitaker Malem. Jones repurposed a cast from 1967 for the breastplate mould, which was finished in an auto body shop. As Kardashian told Vogue, “I wanted something original… I didn’t want to cast my own body.”
Jordan Roth chose the Jean-Léon Gérôme’s painting Pygmalion and Galatea for his custom ensemble by Robert Wun.
Chase Infiniti wore a trompe-l'œil Thom Browne dress inspired by Alexandros of Antioch’s famed second-century-BC Venus de Milo. The dress was embroidered with over 1.5 million stacked sequins paired with tiered silk fringes in over 600 different colors, mimicking brushstrokes.
Lisa’s look bridged fashion and art by evoking the sculpted body. Robert Wun 3D scanned the Blackpink artist’s arms in a veiled arrangement that took inspiration from traditional Thai dance positions.
Kendall Jenner wore a GapStudio by Zac Posen dress made from T-shirts transformed to resemble the Winged Victory of Samothrace, a famed sculpture at the Louvre.
Fresh from her performance with Sabrina Carpenter at Coachella, Madonna made one of the biggest entrances of the evening wearing Saint Laurent – complete with ghost ship headdress and accompanied by seven handmaids carrying her chiffon veil. The look referenced surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, who was an inspiration for the singer’s classic Bedtime Story music video.
Kylie Jenner appeared in a trompe-l'œil Schiaparelli dress that looked as if it has been peeled down to her waist to reveal a nude torso.
Emma Chamberlain and her stylist Jared Ellner sent art references (including works by Van Gogh and Munch) to Mugler creative director Castro Freitas and his team. Ellner also chose archival Mugler looks as influences, including a butterfly dress from 1997. The final gown was hand-painted by artist Anna Deller-Yee.
Queen of fancy dress Heidi Klum can never be accused of not committing to the bit. Her look, made from foam and latex, was based on Italian sculptor Raffaele Monti’s Veiled Vestal statue.
Anne Hathaway’s strapless black Mikado-silk ball gown, complete with a plunging neckline and high-leg slit, was a custom Michael Kors Collection dress. Designed in collaboration with prominent American artist Peter McGough, it served as a sleek canvas for intricate hand-painting work, inspired by the poem Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats.
John Singer Sargent’s Madame X – a portrait of socialite Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau – proved a popular inspiration. With Julianne Moore, Claire Foy and Lauren Sánchez Bezos all choosing to interpret the figure-hugging black dress with scandalising fallen strap – a detail that caused such an uproar at the time that Sargent repainted the strap upright. Moore’s dress is by longtime collaborator Tom Ford.
True to form, Rihanna was last to arrive, hitting the beige carpet after the live-stream ended, wearing a golden Maison Margiela gown that took 1,380 hours to embroider and was inspired by the medieval architecture of Flanders, the northern region of Belgium (where creative director Glenn Martens hails from). She was accompanied by her partner A$AP Rocky in a pink Chanel belted robe that appeared to be a nod to another Sargent painting, Dr Pozzi at Home.
Olympic fencer Miles Chamley-Watson turned himself into a walking cubist masterpiece by Colm Dillane aka KidSuper. Dilane has form when it comes to fashion as art – his SS23 show was a pastiche of a live art auction.
Ayo Edebiri is the latest muse at Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel, hitting the red carpet in an ethereal structural white gown.
The final word goes to Sarah Paulson who used her appearance on the carpet to make a pointed statement about the 1%. Her “blinded by money” mask and grey tulle gown by Matières Fécales was a reflection of the greed and corruption that comes with extreme power.