“It seems that Met Gala attendees did not wish to partake in meaningful expression. Some of them didn’t even want to partake in the event’s theme,” writes fashion journalist Valentina Reni Doukeris in this op-ed.
Two things can be true at once: the Met Gala is a tone-deaf display of extravagance and a celebration of the arts — the often-overlooked art of costume, more specifically.
This year, however, gala attendants failed to celebrate costume arts.
There is no question that the Met Gala is a demonstration of opulence beyond comprehension. Tickets reportedly go for $100,000 per A-lister or affluent guest. While the elite party, the rest of society continues to experience the worst entry-level job market in 37 years, alongside the rising cost of living. This year, the event received an additional layer of backlash when tech billionaire Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, became its lead sponsors and, consequently, honorary co-chairs. The contradiction is evident: Bezos spared $10 million for the gala, but continues to face scrutiny, among others, for his tax contributions (or lack thereof) and Amazon’s failure to provide basic workplace conditions for workers.
Meanwhile, the Met Gala was established as a fundraising opportunity for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute; it is the department’s main source of monetary sustenance and, globally, one of the very few large and public displays of patronage for costume arts. As we navigate the prominence of artificial intelligence and deprioritization of creative arts, it is rare and almost refreshing to see an event dedicated entirely to celebrating the fashion industry’s artistry and the importance of costume historical preservation.
For context…
This year’s Met Gala dress code was “Fashion Is Art,” in complement of the Costume Institute’s “Costume Art” exhibition. The collection on display at the museum places an explicit emphasis on the relationship between the body and clothing. In fact, the curatorial work vindicates the human body as a canvas for costume art. The pieces in the exhibition are organized into sections dedicated to thematic body types, including the pregnant body, the aging body and other categories that reflect on costume through the lens of diversity (i.e. gender, size, disability etc.)
With this information in mind, I had high expectations for what looks designers might come up with. Costume art is an incredibly broad category from which to pull inspiration, and anchoring designs in the body gives way to a number of expressive opportunities.
As experience suggests, Met Gala attendees fail to do more than a shallow read into the night’s theme. However, with a dress code as straightforward as “Fashion Is Art,” I expected that if guests were to ignore the theme of the human body, we would, at the very least, see ample references to artists and their works.
As the headline implies, I was let down.
While fashion is subjective and “style” is open to interpretation, on average, this year’s Met Gala attendees failed to celebrate the body, costume art or the relationship between the two. Worse, as Hollywood continues to push a GLP-fuelled emaciated body type for women, the size-diverse body that the Costume Institute recognizes in the spring exhibition was vastly ignored.
The red carpet had too many neutral tones and “subtle nods” for my taste. Really, during the one year that the theme gives you explicit permission to be vibrant and creative, you decide to wear… a nude illusion or monochromatic gown? Many attendees wore structured bodices in reference to the female form; while somewhat on theme, this motif was as overused as cat ears on Halloween.
Sheer dresses and plain gowns made up a large number of outfits. Some tailored suits may have fit better into last year’s theme. Multiple people even wore jeans to the event, though, unfortunately, there is not enough reach in real-time coverage and commitment (or perhaps knowledge) in fashion journalism to explain the artistic choice behind the inclusion of denim.
RELATED STORY
The 2026 Met Gala Superlatives
As my editor pointed out to me, the discourse around Indian model Bhavitha Mandava’s outfit, who arrived in Chanel trompe l’oeil denim, has been overtly negative. I, myself, experienced a similar sense of disbelief when I first saw Mandava on the carpet.
Here is an abridged version of the nuance that is lost in immediate outcry: mimicking denim with haute couture techniques (Mandava’s look reportedly took 250 hours of artisanal work) as an exploration of the relationship between fashion and the female body invites conversation on:
- Why are women so often expected to reinvent themselves with larger-than-life, often restrictive attire for public appearances, while men typically get by with simpler options
- The history of denim as a garment that subverted convention for female dress, before becoming part of sexualization discourse in the 1990s.
But knowing that netizens are quicker to react than to research, why would you wear “trompe l’oeil” jeans to what is arguably the biggest, most highly-publicized and scrutinized event in fashion, where historical significance is likely to be entirely overlooked?
I won’t even get started on the mediocre interviews and guests who clearly did not know the theme or how their outfits related to it. (Though I may be biased as a Gen Z journalist and must accept that I enjoy Emma Chamberlain’s interviews for Vogue; she has a natural chemistry with everyone that terrifies the introvert in me.)
Now, not everybody failed to impress.
Aforementioned Vogue correspondent Emma Chamberlain made an early entrance in a hand-painted gown by Mugler that literally made her body the canvas; Heidi Klum transformed herself into a sculpture; Bad Bunny appeared as an older version of himself, in a direct response to the exhibition’s ageing body focus; Dior wrapped Sabrina Carpenter in literal film strips; and Madonna debuted a grandiose recreation of The Temptation of St. Anthony. Fragment II by Leonora Carrington.
Robert Wun, who has previously created an entire collection dedicated to the layers of the human body, made a particularly positive impression, dressing cultural powerhouses Lisa, Naomi Osaka, Audrey Nuna (K-pop Demon Hunters), among others. I only wish more designers had shown the same dedication. This list is, of course, non-exhaustive.
In a time where so much feels strained—geopolitical relations, the economy and the basic reality of daily life—I had hope that fashion might act as a positive beacon of human creativity and connection. Even without delving into silence as a form of complicity, it seems that the 2026 Met Gala attendees did not wish to partake in meaningful expression. Some of them didn’t even want to partake in the event’s theme.
