The 78th Met Gala was fashion’s biggest night turned into an art-history class, and the musicians were some of its best students. The dress code, “Fashion Is Art,” asked guests to “consider the many ways that designers use the body as their blank canvas,” per Vogue, and on a cream, cobbled, moss-lined carpet, the answers ran from trompe-l’œil to a Grecian statue, Complex said.
The theme
The night opened the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition, Costume Art, which inaugurates the Met’s new 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries, the Costume Institute’s first permanent home in the museum. Curated by Andrew Bolton, it pairs nearly 400 objects across 5,000 years, organized into bodies: the Classical Body, the Naked Body, the Aging Body, the Pregnant Body. Hypebeast said garments sit on pedestals beside the art, and the mannequins have polished steel heads so visitors see themselves reflected. One pairing sets a Y/Project suit by Glenn Martens beside a first-century marble statue, the Diadoumenos. The show opened to the public May 10 and runs through Jan. 10, 2027. Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Anna Wintour co-chaired.
Rihanna: two Margiela looks, 1,380 hours
Rihanna came late, as ever, in a gown that merged Looks 9 and 31 from Maison Margiela Artisanal 2025: duchesse woven with fine recycled metal threads, with a corseted bodice covered in thousands of crystal beads and antique jewels. Margiela’s team put the embroidery at roughly 1,380 hours, Complex reported. A$AP Rocky, in custom Chanel, kept it simple. “We feel how we look,” he told the AP.
SZA: a divine-feminine gown, built from eBay
SZA arrived as the sun in a yellow corseted gown and floral headpiece designed with Emily Adams Bode Aujla of Bode. She told red-carpet host La La Anthony the whole thing was reworked secondhand: “This entire look is made with reworked pieces purchased on eBay.” The cowries, pieces of saris and real flowers on her head were part of it. “This is like my ethereal body,” she said. “This is how I see myself.” Vogue called the look sustainable.
Janelle Monáe: the motherboard
Janelle Monáe, who Complex said never misses at the Met, leaned into a “natural motherboard,” a Christian Siriano gown that merged technology with Mother Nature. It made Complex’s list of the 10 best-dressed.
Charli xcx and Doja Cat: Saint Laurent after dark
Complex said Charli xcx arrived early in an all-black gown by Saint Laurent, and Doja Cat kept it classy in a Saint Laurent latex ensemble. Charli’s dress had a glass iris curling up the bodice, per our Gala wrap.
Bad Bunny, Katy Perry and the rest
Bad Bunny went the other way entirely, aging himself decades in a Zara suit, a look Complex said was “playing on the aging body” and which fit the exhibition’s Aging Body gallery. We have more on his Zara partnership. Katy Perry covered her face with a sculpted silver headpiece over a long white Stella McCartney gown, while Cardi B inflated a Marc Jacobs gown.
Beyond the music
Away from the stage, Complex’s top 10 leaned sculptural: Naomi Osaka’s Robert Wun cloak and red-gown reveal, Emma Chamberlain’s hand-painted Mugler and a look with an extra set of 3D-scanned arms. Hypebeast read the carpet as a return to Surrealist silhouettes, from Elsa Schiaparelli’s Dalí collaborations to the trompe-l’œil of Jean Paul Gaultier’s SS96 “Pin Up Boys.” The most telling detail was Hypebeast’s account of the exhibition’s own logic: by placing garments beside marble statues, Costume Art argues that clothing is the primary medium through which we understand the human form.
The one you needed to see
Beyoncé’s crystal skeleton by Olivier Rousteing set the night’s tone, and Sabrina Carpenter and Stevie Nicks closed it with a duet of “Landslide”. The exhibition they all dressed for is on view through January.
Sources
Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.
