Met Gala 2026: The Best Beauty Looks From The Red Carpet
From gilded tears to a face that came with a spare, the beauty looks at this year’s Met Gala proved that when the dress code is “Fashion Is Art,” the makeup artists came to win.
By Arissa Ha - published
If fashion is art, then the Met Gala red carpet is its most unruly gallery opening. On the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Monday night, beauty wasn’t an afterthought to the outfit—it was the entire point. Lids were painted like canvases, hair was sculpted like installations, and nails arrived as their own miniature exhibitions. The theme asked guests to consider the dressed body as a blank canvas, and the best beauty looks of the evening took that idea and ran with it, from gothic matte drama to dewy skin so luminous it could hang in the Impressionist wing. Call it the most glamorous argument yet that beauty, too, is art.
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1. LISA
Leave it to LISA to turn the Met Gala steps into a runway of her own making. The beauty details here reward a closer look: diamante embellishments placed with real intention, tracing and lifting her features rather than simply decorating them.
Her smoky grey-purple eye is a direct conversation with the sapphire jewels at her neck and ears, while the embellishments extend down to her hands and nails, picking up the sparkle of her gown in the process.
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2. Paloma Elsesser
Paloma Elsesser’s take on Met Gala beauty was a study in knowing exactly where to direct the eye. Her makeup stays largely unadorned—skin luminous, liner precise, lip understated—which makes the sculptural ear embellishment land all the harder, a jewelled flourish that does more work than a full face of drama ever could.
3.Gwendoline Christie
Gwendoline Christie arrived with what might be the most conceptually interesting beauty moment of the night: a deep oxblood lip and porcelain skin courtesy of Pat McGrath, mirrored almost exactly on the hand-held mask she carried alongside her. Because when one makeup look is simply not enough, you bring a second one as an accessory. The mask is so precisely replicated that it starts to blur the line between the face that was painted and the face that was made, raising the question of which one is the art and which is the artist.
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4. Tyla
With a look inspired by the peacock, Tyla understood that the canvas doesn’t end at the chin. The makeup travelled well past her neckline, melting into the crystal-draped bodice in a way that makes it genuinely difficult to tell where the skin ends and the gown begins—which, given the theme of the night, felt entirely on purpose.
The curled updo and softly smokey eye kept the face from competing with everything happening below it, letting the full sweep of the look read as one gilded, iridescent whole.
5. Jennie
Jennie’s usual makeup signatures were set aside for the evening in favour of something altogether more ethereal, and honestly, we’re obsessed. The brows were lightened to near-invisibility, which opened up her face in a way that makes the softer details feel like they’re doing all the talking—and can we please talk about the freckles? Dusted across the nose so naturally you’d think she was born with them.
From there, an iridescent pink travelled from the lids down to the cheekbones, the collarbones, the lips and even the ears, so the glow read less like a highlight and more like she was lit from somewhere within. The sleek updo with that single curved tendril at the temple tied it all together, and the whole look was just a very good time.
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6. Anok Yai
Anok Yai arrived looking less like she’d gotten ready for the Met Gala and more like she’d been cast in bronze and walked off a plinth. Her entire body was washed in metallic gold, catching the light in a way that made the all-black gown feel almost secondary.
And then there were the tears; multiple gilded streams trailing down her cheeks, adding something that sat somewhere between sorrow and divinity.