In this year’s Met Gala theme, Costume Art, the body is a canvas on which art is painted, made, and shown. It is not the subject, but the surface—holding, framing, and ultimately elevating the work itself. Designers and attendees of the Met Gala have graced the carpet with distinct interpretations of fashion as art, and we consider these five interpretations to have fully realized the theme.
1. Emma Chamberlain in Custom Mugler by Miguel Castro Freitas
Emma Chamberlain’s father is a painter, she tells Vogue, and this is why her fascination with watercolours has translated succinctly in what might be the Met’s most daring, yet rightfully interpreted, costume. From the back, the composition begins with restraint – tightly-fitted, lightly painted, and somewhat sheer – before cascading down to her feet in ruffles, then continuing till about 5 meters from her, where it continues to unfold. These ends are painted a mix of deep navy blue, sky blue, and lilac, with hints of purple peeking through so that it looks like Chamberlain is standing in the middle of Himalayan blue poppies and purple hibiscuses.
Following the colours back up till her waist, the dress bursts into a mix of mossy green, some yellows, and red, deliberately uneven, yet compositionally precise. Chamberlain points out that the Butterfly Mugler dress from 1997 is a key inspiration for her own interpretation this year. When we get to the waist, we see a peekaboo of light teal brush strokes that take us to what’s in front. What’s in front is truly a different story. Here, the acrylic paint is a big feature because it is textured on the dress in thick impasto technique, a painting style that first emerged during the Venetian Renaissance through Titian and Tintoretto. The impasto is a bright yellow that starts beneath her left underarm and covers her bust area before spreading out to the side of her right thigh to meet the mossy green and red fields like an ambitious river.
The artistry of the painting on this dress is one that can only be done by a multi-dimensional artist, Anna Deller-Yee, reportedly over several hours. The sleeves are the finalized touches to this artwork on the canvas that is Chamberlain’s body, which does a good job of showing it. It’s fitted till the wrists, where it splits into multiple long, soft strings that have been painted to match the shades of the dress.
2. Naomi Osaka in Custom Robert Wun
Architecture, the lesser-known branch of what has historically been defined as art, might have made its first headway into the Met Gala. In one shot, Naomi Osaka’s hat by Awon Golding takes on the semblance of a congregation of Japanese roofs stationed beside each other and captured at a glance. In another, it is a shapeshifter that morphs into a combination of a derby hat and the traditional Japanese sun hat with its centered feather detailing. Despite its size and the area that it covers, it is not as dramatic as it is artistic.
The rest of the costume makes a strong case for the Met’s theme. Described as Shedding of the Skin, it’s a two-part statement that comes undone later. The outer part is a large white coat with puffed sleeves that curve just right and is buttoned in Nihon-style, or like a Kimono Collar, then flares from the waist down. Apart from being a cultural reference, it also draws heavily from Japonisme, a 19th-century art style where Western artists like Van Gogh and Monet mainly used Kimono-clad figures in their work. The coat also features circular cuts from which red feathers poke out like growing shrubs.
When it comes off, though, we see the second layer – a skin-tight red dress from which you’ll originally imagine the feathers to be attached to. What emerges is a constructed second skin for Osaka — one that blurs the line between anatomy and ornament. It is beaded quite exquisitely to outline what might look like the female anatomy from the collarbone to the femur, but we can also see abs and the rounded curvature of the bust area. This skin is paired with claw-inspired sheer gloves through which you see her hands painted red to match. While this outfit takes on obvious art inspirations, the more interesting part of it might be the performance art that Osaka planned to be attached to its reveal, and which defines it concretely as the Shedding of the Skin.
3. Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo in Jean Paul Gaultier
Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo is donned in a pearly-white ball-shaped dress that pools around her feet in a spiky cascade of pleats. The upper half is nearly the same; however, these spiky pleats, which define much of the dress, tightly point upwards in two opposing halves that appear as if they are growing, albeit prickly angel wings. There’s a cinch around the midriff before we’re introduced to the more fascinating part of the gown.
The lower half might be its own storytelling outside of the fact that part of it mimics the Winged Victory of Samothrace, a Greek Hellenistic era masterpiece that is currently one of the beloveds of the Louvre in Paris. On Kuo’s white dress, from which it hangs, and which she wears daintily, it also passes for the statue of an angel falling into a waterfall. This dress would also have been fitting for the 2025 Met Heavenly Bodies theme, but it makes as much sense here, all the same.
This is one of the few interpretations that fully resolve the Met Gala theme, as Kuo wears this like an art gallery that understands what it means to house and showcase standout art pieces. Her Jewelry – singular bold rings on each hand and a pair of arthropod-like earrings – is the lighting the costume needs to truly shine.
4. Mona Patel in Dolce and Gabbana
Mona Patel approaches the theme through anatomical precision. She arguably has a portfolio of on-theme outfit depictions that take up sizable stylistic room. This year, she’ll position the look within the historical confluence of art and science or art as a tool for scientific exploration and situate that within the Met’s theme of costume art. Her dress is tailored in the Ècorché art form, a type of medical art that strips the skin off a person to reveal just their muscles. This art form historically became a staple of academic art training from the Renaissance onwards, and Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical drawings are among the most famous examples. It is not just the way that the fabric is tightly pleated and contoured to mold into her body’s curves that makes this reference very clear. It is also the skeletal framing of the back of the dress, the dress’s unofficial shoulder pad, which appears to be the deltoid muscle, and the golden strings that hold these pieces together like ligaments.
This is also a two-part outfit. Unlike Osaka’s two-part story, where one layer complements the other, the outer layer of Patel’s outfit – a hooded cape – might tell a more grounded story of whatever her dress fails to capture. And that is Da Vinci’s art in its various forms. It has the shine of a silky chiffon and features multiple drawings of the legendary Italian artist, including the Vitruvian Man, multiple male body part studies, and his mirror script. The way that her cape holds these drawings while swaying left to right with every step she takes is the right kind of homage Da Vinci envisioned in his works.
5. Sabine Getty in Ashi Studio Couture
The basque of Getty’s dress immediately draws the eye, but the surrounding structure reveals a more complex composition—a spider-web-like framework that I’d describe as an “artfit,” where the distinction between garment and artwork begins to dissolve.
The way that it props and accentuates her collarbones before asymmetrically gliding over to cover her left arm, which she deliberately places on her waist to draw you back to the dress’s basque, is art in itself. This Jewelry designer has painted her midsection within the dress itself, featuring her hands wearing the Jewelry she designs in a classic Baroque style, associated with the notorious Milanese artist Caravaggio, and it holds together with surprising precision. The painted basque is Getty’s own skin in the many ways that definition can go, and this is a case where we see an attendee almost seamlessly blend into the art that they’re wearing.
The lower part of this dress is a continuation of the spider web imitation, which might have been made to come alive through a tulle/organza fabric. It is occasionally ruffled or pulled together to create multiple webs that you do not want to get lost in. Getty wears and becomes art for this year’s Met Gala.
Honourable mention
Sabrina Carpenter in Dior by Jonathan Anderson
Her Christian Louboutin heel choice is less resolved, but to be draped in multiple film rolls of a movie named after you is art, and probably also poetry. Sabrina Carpenter graced the Met’s carpets with bundles of films fashionably stacked to her sides, made into a halter corset top, and trailing after her in classic princess fashion as she walked. This is an art form that she’s lived for a defining part of her life, and now she gets to turn it into an art form that she’s quickly growing in: fashion.
