Met Gala 2026: 10 Celebrities Who Took The Theme Literally

The Met Gala 2026, which celebrates the ‘Costume Art’ fashion exhibit (open until January 2027) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, saw many celebrities walking the famed steps. The evening’s dress code, ‘Fashion is Art’, basically left plenty of room for imagination for these celebrities (and their stylists) to create their red-carpet moments.

Whether they found inspiration from a chosen artist or specific artworks, the 10 celebrities in this list not only showed their bold fashion choices but also made us stop and do more research about their looks, while inviting plenty of discussion from fashion pundits and commentators along the way. From LISA to Lauren Sanchez, whether you love them or hate them, these celebrities made the list because they understood the assignment.

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1. Heidi Klum

Trust Heidi Klum to follow the evening’s dress code to the tee. Inspired by The Veiled Woman sculpture (1854) by the Italian artist Raffaele Monti, which is exhibited at the Met, this custom look was a complete copy of the marble artwork modelled straight onto Klum’s body, from head to toe. It was as if the actual piece came to life.

2. Sam Smith

The non-binary singer looked absolutely dramatic in this Christian Cowan black winged coat dress number channelling the late Marchesa Luisa Casati, the highly eccentric Italian heiress and patroness of the arts. Frequently referenced in fashion, Casati surrounded herself with some of the most important artists in the early 20th century Europe, including Kees Van Dongen, Man Ray and famed costumier Léon Bakst.

3. LISA

Call it surrealist fashion. The Robert Wun couture look that LISA wore on the green carpet was an artwork in itself. It was reminiscent of Salvador Dali’s painting entitled Soft construction with boiled beans (premonition of civil war) (1936), which pictured a vast human body breaking out into excesses of arms and legs tearing at one another in a delirium of auto strangulation embellished with some mundane boiled beans. And in true self-professed Dalian prophecy, he added “premonition of civil war” onto the title six months before the Spanish civil war broke out. Was it clairvoyance and is it LISA’s commentary on the current news headlines? We’ll never know. What we know is that the extra arms on LISA’s dress were adorned in Bvlgari baubles. Excess, indeed.

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4. Janelle Monae

Janelle Monae chose to sing the praise of upcycled fashion in a custom Christian Siriano creation, where the centrepiece was made from green moss, multi-coloured braided wires, 3D butterfiles and other recycled materials, featuring huge side cutouts, a floor-sweeping mermaid skirt and a tutleneck. Did the ensemble make it hard for her to climb the Met steps? Definitely. But did it also make her stand out like the way she would for each of the Met Galas she has attended? Absolutely.

5. Gwendoline Christie

The Game of Thrones and Wednesday star, and her trusted stylist and friend, Katie Grand, opted for Giles Deacon’s custom dress for this year’s Met Gala—a designer (and her real-life partner) whom she’s been wanting to wear for a while. On top of that, Gwendoline Christie cited other artists that she referred to create the ensemble.

First, there’s John Singer Sargent, whom Deacon used as the silhouette of the elegant and graceful crimson dress. Then there’s the work of the British Surrealist photographer Madame Yevonde and New York’s counter-culture photographer Ira Cohen, whom both loaned the edge and slight distortion onto the look. After that, Christie topped it all off with skillful makeup by another collaborator, Pat McGrath, and a mirror/mask in the shape of her visage. The result was something so meta and, respectfully, surreal.

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6. Lena Dunham

Earlier this month, Lena Dunham appeared as a guest on Las Culturistas, one of Spotify’s top podcast channels hosted by comedian Matt Rogers and Saturday Night Live alumnae Bowen Yang, and threw a jibe at fashion’s ‘quiet luxury’ phenomenon, questioning why no one is having fun with fashion anymore. And boy how fun she looked on the Met Gala steps last evening.

In a blood-red feathered Valentino dress, Dunham turned heads channelling her inner showgirl, reminiscent of the hedonistic energy of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec posters. Imagine what would the conversation be when she bumped into Met Gala 2026 co-chair Nicole Kidman and Moulin Rouge director, Baz Luhrmann and costumier/spouse, Catherine Martin, on the corridor leading onto the exhibition. Come what may!

7. Sarah Paulson

Ever the consummate actor, Sarah Paulson presented us with a tableau for her Met Gala 2026 performance. Styled by Karla Welch, Paulson wore Matières Fécales’ fall/winter 2026 collection. Titled The ONE Percent, Paulson played on the caricature of the ultra wealthy, who, ahem, some were in attendance at the very evening. The exaggerated volume of the fluffy tulle ball gown and its theatrical bow and the dollar bill mask all sent a very clear message. It was both a critique and a celebration of the evening at the same time.

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8. Bad Bunny

Honestly, there’s hardly any a time when Bad Bunny ever misses the point when it comes to his red-carpet choices. The charismatic performer went all the way to make a comment about aging during a fashion event by showing up in full special makeup. The prosthetic work made him fully unrecognisable and aged him by at least three decades, replete with white hair, facial hair and a walking stick for the full effect. Did he still look distinguished? Yes, especially when he paired the look with a custom black Zara-designed tuxedo.

9. Serena Williams

Serena Williams cut a striking figure in a custom Marc Jacobs number. The gold and silver ensemble made her absolutely look like the Grecian goddess that she is—Athena, to be exact. Widely known as a the goddess of wisdom and war, Athena is also the goddess of arts and crafts, where in the hierarchy of Olympus, she oversaw the creation of intricate objects, representing the combination of intellect and manual skill. Now that’s what we call an inspiration.

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10. Lauren Sanchez

This might seem like a controversial choice, but the significance of the ensemble that Met Gala 2026’s benefactor, Lauren Sanchez, was simply too hard to ignore. Styled by Law Roach, Sanchez’s custom Schiaparelli look was modelled after Portrait of Madame X (1884), a portrait painting by John Singer Sargent of a young socialite, who was the wife of a rich French banker. The painting was in fact not a commissioned work, but rather Sargent’s study of the society of the time. Known for her beauty and infidelities, the young socialite was labelled as a ‘professional beauty’, a term for a woman who uses personal skills to advance herself socially. The painting’s controversial reception at the Paris Salon of that year blew up into a full-fledged scandal over the overtly sexualised satin dress and the jeweled straps that hung off her shoulder. The negative reviews pushed Sargent to redo the painting and secure the strap back to where it supposed to be. Now, how would that reference and history sit within the context of Lauren Sanchez today? Was this a case of life imitates art? You be the judge.