Thoughts on this year’s Met Gala theme “Costume Art” and dress code “Fashion is Art”
When I first saw the 2026 Met Gala theme and the beginnings of news on the exhibit, I imagined most looks would be centered around the dressed body as a costume, interpreting the play on body types, self-image and perception, and nudity in the intersection of art and fashion throughout history.
Instead, the majority of looks took the dress code seriously, playing with classical fine art pieces and how they could be recreated on fashion’s biggest night. Some key examples of these looks were Hunter Schaefer’s interpretation of Mada Primavesi in Prada. Chase Infiniti and Kylie Jenner’s interpretation of Venus de Milo in Thom Browne and Schiaparelli respectively. Kendall Jenner’s The Winged Victory of Samothrace in GapStudio by Zac Posen, which truly came to life once her wings were spread after the carpet. Gracie Abrams Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer in Matthieu Blazy for Chanel.
What is most impressive about many of those interpretations is how the designers capture the essence of marble in sculpture, the tonality of a painting, or simply call our minds back to classical pieces in a way that evokes memory. When I saw them, I felt as if recognition was on the tip of my tongue, that they called back to something I had seen before yet forgotten. While they were beautiful in their craft and styling, those looks only truly captured me once I saw side-by-side comparisons of the look and the fine art piece on social media.
Of everything I saw, my top five favorite looks were:
1. Lisa in Robert Wun
I loved the way the look used 3D-printed replicas of her own arms to create the motif of a bride lifting her own veil, especially when thinking about how brides are portrayed in art. They are often a pure face and body to be obscured and later revealed, as Wun and Lisa enacted on the carpet by staging the veil in different positions.
Side note, Robert Wun won the entire night in my opinion with his structural looks that referenced fine art, the anatomical form, and the intersection between technology, fashion, and the presentation of the body today. I loved how he framed Jordan Roth in arms that captured and presented the body and face as a spectacle, a sculpture come to life, referencing Pygmalion and Galatea. How Noami Osaka’s look draws from the movement of blood as it spurts and a shedding of skin. Nichapat Suphap’s techno-driven recreation of The Creation of Adam, and the fact that he dressed two billionaires as if they were Squid Games characters.
2. Emma Chamberlin in Mugler
This look is a true work of art, considering you can find many different interpretations of which piece of art it is referencing, whether it be Monet, Van Gogh, or Mugler’s La Chimère. In my opinion, it is most directly referencing the Mugler Fall/Winter 1997.
The gown is now estimated at $4 to $6 million, making it one of the most expensive and desirable pieces of couture today and catapulting it into the status of a piece of fine art. As her look is largely rendered with globs of paint that were hand painted, the dress itself is art in its purest form—art in the thick of creation. I love how her dress, combined with her styling and makeup, achieves the dark and lightness of a painting, from the muddy, murky, almost watercolor browns of the hip to the bright yellow in her inner corner.
3. Sabrina Carpenter in Dior:
I love the meta layer of using rolls of film from Sabrina with Aubrey Hepburn to create the dress (and what a feat of creation to sew that together in such an elegant, form fitting piece) and all the opportunities the look gave her to interact with reporters in her signature, playful tongue-in-cheek way.
Referencing a film is also a more unique interpretation of art on the carpet, yet a genre that has a direct tie to fashion, celebrity, and self-presentation.
4. Gwendoline Christie in Giles Deacon:
While wearing the design of her longtime partner, Gwendoline Christie also walked the carpet with a mask of her face by GIllian Wearing. I love this play on the self, while interpreting one of the most highly depicted parts of the body in art: the face.
In Perfect Magazine, she discussed how she wanted to hide, display a smoother version of herself, and the duality the mask offers. Whether or not it shields you from the world or reflects the world to itself.
This concept is interesting when layered with the fact that thousands of cameras would be flashing over her face and her mask-face, reflecting her image in media and refracting light in the moment. She is captured both with and without the mask that bears her own face and both states are an act in being observed as a dressed body or piece of art.
5. Rachel Zegler in Atelier Prabal Gurung:
Lastly, while the look itself was not as elaborate as my top four, I loved the way Rachel Zegler’s look referenced The Execution of Lady Jane Grey considering her hash treatment that borders on crucifixion in the media whenever she appears publicly and the character she plays in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
Lady Jane Grey was wrongfully executed when she was a teen, thematically relevant for Lucy Grey’s participation in the Hunger Games. Yet, both Lady Jane Grey lives on as a legacy, a tale, a myth in this painting, as Lucy Grey lives in ballads, the call of the forest.
As an additional note, I was impressed by two looks for their craftsmanship and innovation: Eileen Gu in Iris Van Herpen and Grace Ling in her own design. Eileen Gu’s look was a feat of expanding what is possible to create, made of 15000 glass bubbles with hidden bubble dispensers that she could press a button and fill the air around her with bubbles. Grace Ling’s look was a feat of technology with her aero-aluminum-printed and platinum-plated bodice inspired by The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí.
Overall, my favorite looks were those that played with the body, the anatomical human form, and unexpected interpretations of art and the ways it can interact with a sense of self and celebrity. These looks, among others, held all parts of the theme and dress code in tandem and created something new that will live on in discussion and thought long past the carpet itself.
May 12, 2026.
Autumn Rose Bellan 