By Jessica Ye (Jessica Yap)
Let me be honest. “Costume Art” could have gone very wrong.
It’s the kind of theme that invites surface-level dressing. A few obvious references, a dramatic silhouette, and everyone calls it a night. But the Met Gala on May 4, 2026 only gets interesting when fashion behaves like couture, when the idea is built into the garment, not styled on top of it.
This year, the divide was clear. Some arrived in outfits. Others in pieces that felt worked on, handled, constructed. You could see the difference immediately.
These are the ten I kept circling back to, not because they were loud, but because they held.
1. Beyoncé in Balmain by Olivier Rousteing
She returns after 10 years, and everything feels louder around her.
The gown, styled by her legendary stylist and close friend Ty Hunter, reads like a skeleton. Crystals trace the ribcage and spine, following the body instead of sitting on top. You see the outline of anatomy before you see anything else.
With Jay-Z and Blue Ivy Carter on the steps, it becomes a full family image in the middle of everything else happening.
This is also how you return to the Met.
2. Lisa in Robert Wun
This is where things take a turn, and I’m glad it does.
Lisa doesn’t play it safe here. Extra arms extend from her frame in a way that doesn’t feel attached, more like repetition of form. It shifts the silhouette into something unfamiliar without breaking it apart.
The reference sits close to surrealist thinking around the body — duplication, distortion, things made slightly unstable and eerie in the best way.
3. Janelle Monáe in Christian Siriano
This is where I paused.
Look closer and you start catching the details. Cables, bits of hardware, small disc-like pieces worked straight into the gown. Not placed on top for effect, but embedded into it, like they belong there.
Then the moss and butterflies come in.
That’s the shift. You’ve got something mechanical, almost cold, sitting against something soft and alive. It could have felt messy, but it doesn’t. It holds.
It reminds me of those works where materials aren’t precious, but the way they’re put together makes you look twice. There’s no attempt to make it “pretty”. It’s slightly off, a little raw, and that’s exactly why it works.
It feels like it’s still moving, still forming. And honestly, that’s what made it one of the most interesting looks on the carpet for me.
4. Emma Chamberlain in custom Mugler gown designed by Miguel Castro Freitas and hand-painted by Anna Deller-Yee
Internet multihyphenate Emma Chamberlain is not referencing art here. She is the artwork.
The gown, a stand-out of the night, reads like a painting brought to life. The colour looks worked into the fabric rather than sitting on top, almost like wet paint that hasn’t settled. It has that soft, blurred quality you’d expect from an impressionist canvas.
Then the lace shifts it. Slightly worn in, a little fragile, which gives it that memento mori edge. Beautiful, but with something fading underneath.
The smoky eye seals it. That diffused, smudged finish mirrors the gown perfectly, like the pigment has carried onto the face. Nothing feels too sharp, everything slightly softened, slightly undone.
It’s cohesive without trying too hard. You look at her and it just makes sense.
5. Charli XCX in Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello
This is Charli XCX stepping into a different register entirely.
A strapless, semi-sheer black gown, with a glass iris winding up the bodice, like it’s growing out of the fabric rather than sitting on it. It catches you immediately because it doesn’t behave like an accessory. It becomes part of the dress.
The reference connects back to Yves Saint Laurent’s 1988 couture collection and its relationship to Vincent van Gogh’s Irises, translated here into glass form rather than painted surface.
There’s a shift in her presence here. Less brightness, more shadowed, slightly slower.
6. Heidi Klum in the veiled sculpted look
You register the marble effect first, then realise it’s fabric.
It falls over the body in that way stone is carved in classical sculpture, where drapery isn’t separate from the figure, it’s part of it. The face is partially obscured, which pushes the focus back to the folds and the way they sit against the body.
It sits in the same visual language as The Veiled Vestal and Veiled Christ, where the idea is less about covering and more about creating that illusion of depth inside something solid.
What makes it even more interesting is the way it’s built. This isn’t just tailoring. It’s constructed using prosthetic techniques by Mike Marino, turning latex and spandex into something that reads like carved marble under light.
It’s very Heidi. She commits fully to transformation, especially through her Halloween work, so this level of execution feels expected from her. This time, it feels like she’s aiming for the ‘living Met Gala sculpture’ title as well.
7. Hailey Bieber in Saint Laurent
Deep blue, fitted close to the body.
Everything sits in the cut. Clean lines, nothing pulling attention away from the silhouette. It’s about shape, not surface.
It recalls the body-casting language associated with Claude Lalanne in collaboration contexts with Yves Saint Laurent, where the body becomes something preserved in form rather than simply dressed.
It holds that idea without moving beyond it.
8. Sabrina Carpenter in Dior
Very cinematic in feeling.
It sits in that old Hollywood reference without overplaying it. You can see the link back to Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, not as a costume reference, but film strips translated into fabric and silhouette.
It’s clean, very Dior, very contained.
9. Katy Perry in Stella McCartney
All white.
The dress shifts as she moves, reading through motion rather than heavy surface detail.
The futuristic mask changes the reading completely. It turns the look into a staged sequence rather than a single outfit moment.
It draws from masked portraiture in art, where identity is shown in stages instead of all at once.
It’s built for performance, not stillness.
10. Anna Wintour
She doesn’t enter the Met Gala.
She holds it.
Everything in the room sits inside the framework she sets as co-chair. The theme, the guest list, the tone — it all moves through her before it becomes anything else.
She doesn’t need a defining look. The role already is the statement.
The strongest looks weren’t the loudest.
They were the ones where you could see how they were made — what sat on the body, what became part of it, what changed how you looked.
That’s when “Costume Art” actually showed up.
