In February, when the 2026 Met Gala theme, “Fashion is Art,” was announced, we made a bold claim: “The 2026 Met Gala is going to be different.” With an expansive theme that directly challenged designers and celebs to go into museums and bring the art back out and wear it, we expected sculptural looks that challenged the limits of costumes and what we think of as valuable art. The Costume Institute even directed our attention to the history of the “clothed body,” leaving us not only to think about the best looks, but also the most primitive and essential.
Unfortunately, the theme fell flat in a big way. Hands, sculptural nudes, and florals (groundbreaking) were trends of the night, but the majority of guests showed up in much simpler formalwear. While we could dwell on our confusion about how basic and out of place many of the looks are, we’d rather celebrate the stars who understood the assignment, meeting our expectations or even taking the extra step down the carpet required to surprise and unsettle us.
Eileen Gu
Eileen Gu’s bubble dress is a perfect Met Gala look. It’s straightforward enough to enjoy (and even emulate!), and it was an intentional take on the theme. Eileen worked with designer Iris Van Herpen and artists Azusa Murakami and Alexander Groves. The designers focused less on the clothing and more on the body, specifically where the body came from in the first place.
The bubble dress is whimsical and light, fitting for 2026, but it’s all science. The bubbles represent abiogenesis, a scientific theory that some of Earth’s earliest life-forms were born from “bubbles.” (For the scientists out there, vesicles.) The result of this is a dress that floats across the carpet with 15,000 hand-formed iridescent glass bubbles. If you thought that was enough, you’re wrong. The skirt also housed a complicated bubble machine that released bubbles around Eileen as she walked down the carpet.
LISA
Lisa of BLACKPINK also walked the carpet in a stunning, ethereal gown. Her sculptural Robert Wun gown featured two additional arms that floated about her, holding a veil. While it might make you think you’ve seen a ghost, the arms weren’t random. Sculpted from LISA’s own arms, the arms are posed in a traditional Thai dance position.
What we love about this look is that it addresses the sculptural elements of the theme, but represents movement and dance in a way that reminds us that fashion is unexpected. It is regularly changing, but everything is haunted by the styles of the past. Complete with sequins and beads, this was a lesson in costuming we won’t forget.
Sabrina Harrison
Sabrina Harrison arrived at the Met Gala in a muted purple and cream Jean Paul Gaultier gown that used woven elements, corsetry, and a dramatic hairpiece. The dress was archival couture from Jean Paul Gaultier’s Spring 2010 “Mexico” collection. She also carried a custom beating heart bag designed by Chris Habana and Cameron Hughes.
Made of 18 meters of hand-painted silk taffeta and 25 meters of steel boning, the look brings to mind the long history of fiber arts that support fashion and so many other industries. The basket design also asks viewers to remember the structure of a gown and how it fits the body and reshapes it. In an Instagram post, Sabrina commented on the shared roles of body and clothing. “The body becomes part of the design, a living sculpture in motion.”
Miles Chamley-Watson
There’s no fighting on the carpet, but Team USA Olympic fencer Miles Chamley-Watson included his profession in his cubist look. The carpeted suit created by KidSuper included a hand-painted Olympic fencing mask.
Usually, Met Gala menswear is high fashion in design but more focused on formality than on theme. Miles’s look challenges this with the movement of fencing and the fragmented style of cubism. We appreciate the direct link to major art and textile work. The KidSuper suit bridges the gap between formal fashion and personal costuming.
Lauren Wasser
Model Lauren Wasser wore another self-referential look that embraced the Met Gala 2026 theme. Her two-piece gold lamé suit was not only brilliant gold to match her signature gold prosthetic legs, but it was short, stopping above the knee to highlight a black gap between the hem of her pants and the beginning of her prosthetics.
This interpretation of the “clothed body” works to showcase that there are different bodies, which is especially relevant to Lauren’s work as an activist for awareness about toxic shock syndrome and a rise in harmful eating and fashion trends.
SZA
Designed in a collaboration between Emily Adams Bode Aujla, Vogue, and eBay, SZA’s gown is a lesson in Met Gala research. For the “Fashion is Art” theme, the designer chose eBay-sourced secondhand materials (100 yards of fabric, to be more specific) and inspiration from two centuries of fashion. The result is a regal gown that takes the sensibilities and instincts of Viennese artists and 18th-century silhouettes to create something magical.
From Viennese florals to Indian fabrics to New York quartz beads, the artistry here is thoughtful, intense. The gown is a costume in the best sense of the word. It is bold, detailed, and, for this year’s Met Gala theme, it provides a global sense of fashion and how art builds on other art.
Sabrina Carpenter
The goal of every costume is to be someone else for a moment. Sabrina Carpenter’s Met Gala look let her try a different “Sabrina” on for size, Old Hollywood style (literally). Her Dior slit tulle dress featured another unique fabric, rhinestone film strips of Audrey Hepburn’s 1954 film Sabrina. In a fitting coincidence, the 2026 Met Gala took place on Audey Hepburn’s birthday.
While this look leans more into the dress silhouette and Sabrina’s own persona more than our traditional understandings of art, what we like about this look is how it uses the theme for a multi-media effect. Film strips become fabric, and movies become fashion in this look. Fashion is art because it bends around us. The “clothed body” uses wearables to decide and display which version of you to share with the world, one look at a time.