And that’s a wrap on fashion’s Super Bowl for another year. This year’s Met Gala celebrated the opening of the museum’s latest exhibition, Costume Art, with a garden-inspired carpet and the dress code ‘Fashion is Art’. The world’s biggest stars – including Beyoncé, Rihanna and Madonna – came together to toast the Costume Institute and deliver their best art-inspired fashion. You can see all our favourite looks here, but beyond the obvious glitz and glam, several trends cut through the noise. For example…

FREE THE NIPPLE

Remember back in 2014 when all your favourite celebrities were posting in support of the #FreeTheNipple movement? Well over ten years on and it seems the cause has been revived on the carpet of this year’s Met Gala. With a theme that explored the “inherent relationship between clothing and the body”, it was to be expected that some guests would dabble in the more risqué and expose body parts. Nip slips came courtesy of Kylie Jenner in Schiaparelli, Hailey Bieber in Saint Laurent and Kim Kardashian in custom Allen Jones and Whitaker Malem, who all wore metallic breast plates with accentuated hard nipples. Kendall Jenner also had one exposed boob in a custom Gap Studio dress, while Chase Infiniti’s Thom Browne look and Sabine Getty’s Ashi Studio dress featured illustrations and illusions of naked bodies. See more here. 

HANDS UP

If guests didn’t have their nipples proudly on display, it was likely because a pair of trompe-l’œil hands were covering them – as was the case with Lena Mahfouf, Sabine Getty and Nichapat Suphap. Jordan Roth gave us all a jump scare with the Robert Wun demon crawling over his shoulder, meanwhile Lisa also wore Robert Wun (one of the most popular designers of the night), featuring a pair of arms that had been 3D printed from her own. See more here. 

MASK 4 MASK

Earlier this year, we noticed that masks were having a moment during the AW26 fashion shows. Now, they’ve made it to the Met Gala too. Katy Perry wore a headpiece by Miodrag Guberinic, which looked remarkably like a fencing helmet, styled with custom Stella McCartney. Sarah Paulson took a dig at the one per cent, wearing a mask by Matières Fécales. Gwendoline Christie wore her own face as a mask, and each of Madonna’s accompanying models wore their own eye mask. See more here. 

REHEATED NACHOS

One of the most surprising trends of the evening was the amount of looks we’d seen before. Anna Wintour wore a custom Chanel couture dress, almost identical to the one she wore in 2019 (also Chanel couture). Matching the carpet on both occasions, back then it was pink, whereas this time around it was turquoise. And she wasn’t the only one revisiting Met Galas gone by. A member of the Met’s board of trustees, Jennifer Rubio, wore a wood-look breast plate and sweeping cream skirt – almost exactly like the Loewe one worn by Taylor Russell at the 2024 Met. Elsewhere, we also spotted the exact same Christopher Kane dress worn by FKA Twigs in 2015, this time on dermatologist Lisa Airan, while Lisa’s Robert Wun gown was similar to Lana Del Rey’s McQueen dress from 2024.

FEELING BLUE

As we predicted last week, French artist Yves Klein had a big impact on tonight’s carpet. Known for inventing his own shade of blue, International Klein Blue, and for using women’s bodies as paintbrushes in his “Anthropometry” series, the hue was one of the most popular colours on the Met steps. Hailey Bieber sported IKB with a gown designed by Saint Laurent, styled with a gold breastplate, meanwhile Tessa Thompson looked like someone had splattered wet paint on her, wearing a custom Valentino dress. Even her finger tips had been dipped in the paint. Elsewhere, human rights lawyer Alexi Ashe wore an archive Celine by Phoebe Philo dress, featuring a bold Yves Klein print.