The first Monday of May 2026 belongs, as always, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But this edition, something greater than fashion was at stake. The theme Costume Art convoked the industry to a profound reflection: what does it mean to dress the body when the body itself is the work? With more than 400 pieces spanning five millennia of human history, the exhibition that opened this Sunday proposes that fashion was never ornament. It was always language.
What connects every curatorial department and every gallery in the museum is fashion, or the dressed body. It is the connective thread of the entire museum.” — Andrew Bolton, Chief Curator of the Costume Institute
The dress code Fashion is Art sounded like an invitation to total freedom and guests responded with everything they had. The red carpet gained, for the first time, the texture of an Italian Impressionist garden, with moss-green and flowers evoking the Renaissance frescoes of northern Italy. Anna Wintour, immovable queen of a court always in motion, was among the first to cross the entrance. To her left, daughter Bee Carrozzini. To the right, a new era of the Met Gala, sponsored by Jeff Bezos’s Amazon, already marked by the political absence of artists like Olivia Rodrigo, who chose silence as a form of declaration.
The co-chairs of the evening: Beyoncé — in her triumphant return to the event — Nicole Kidman, and Venus Williams. At the creative command center, Anthony Vaccarello and Zoë Kravitz. The party was, as always, simultaneous with the world watching through screens: at once a space of power, of art, and of pure theatre.
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| Photo collage via Vogue |
Looks That Defined the Night
Beyoncé
Balmain · Olivier Rousteing · Custom
The evening’s co-chair arrived in a skeletal custom gown by Olivier Rousteing, exposing the human body’s bone map through three-dimensional embroidery on transparent tulle. A white feather train, the season’s ultimate totem, completed the silhouette. Blue Ivy, 14 years old, made her historic debut alongside her mother in an all-white Balenciaga ensemble, mirrored sunglasses and pearls. Jay-Z, in Louis Vuitton, closed out the most-photographed family triptych of the evening.
Seldom does a co-chair command with such intention: every detail of the look dialogues with the exhibition’s theme, the dressed body as an art object, not a surface to be covered. Rousteing transformed anatomy into couture. Beyoncé transformed couture into spectacle. The body as sculpture. The garment as exegesis.
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| Beyoncé and Blue Ivy / Photo via Getty Images |
Rihanna
Maison Margiela · John Galliano
Punctual only in making the wait worth every second, Rihanna arrived near 10 PM in a Margiela look that glittered like a constellation in motion. Alongside A$AP Rocky — in a pink Chanel robe — the couple delivered the most anticipated duet on the carpet. When asked about a rap battle with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Rocky simply laughed.
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| Rihanna / Photo via Getty |
Emma Chamberlain
Mugler · Miguel Castro Freitas · Custom
Vogue’s red carpet host became, herself, the evening’s most discussed subject. The Mugler dress — hand-painted by artist Anna Alessandra Kamaile Deller-Yee over a 1997 vintage La Chimère — transfigured fabric into canvas. Fluid brushstrokes in deep blues and turquoise cascaded down the body like controlled tidal waves.
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| Emma Chamberlain / Photo via Getty |
Irina Shayk
Alexander Wang · Custom
The most radical transgression of the evening dispensed with fabric entirely. Wang dressed Shayk in jewellery — watches as bracelets, layered necklaces, articulated rings — in armour constructed entirely of fine jewellery pieces. Extreme minimalism that, paradoxically, created the look with the greatest visual density on the carpet.
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| Irina Shayk / Photo via Getty |
Sabrina Carpenter
Dior · Jonathan Anderson · Custom
Carpenter arrived dressed in film reels of her favourite movies — celluloid strips woven to the body in a Jonathan Anderson creation for Dior that made cinema itself the raw material. Audiovisual memory as couture. One of the conceptually most sophisticated moments of the evening.
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| Sabrina Carpenter / Photo via Getty |
The Shadow of Bezos: Art or Sponsorship?
The 2026 edition of the Met Gala will also be remembered for what did not happen within it. Olivia Rodrigo, after liking a viral video calling for a boycott of the event — sponsored, for the first time, by Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos — opted for a declared absence. She was not alone. The presence of Bezos at the Metropolitan Museum, an institution symbolising collective cultural heritage, created a background noise that accompanied every look, every pose, every statement on the carpet.
The tension is old: the Met Gala operates on the always-tense border between art and capital. With tickets that reached 75,000 dollars in 2025, the event was never popular — but the direct association with one of the most controversial figures in American technological capitalism added a new layer of discomfort. Sarah Paulson responded with humour: her look was christened “the 1 percent.” She wore a blindfold.
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| Sarah Paulson |
Hoxa believes that fashion, at its best, is capable of carrying contradiction without coming apart. What we witnessed last night was exactly that: artists using the most expensive stage in the world to say things money cannot buy. The question remains open and perhaps that is the most vital sign that the Met Gala still matters.
Hoxa’s Best of the Night
I - BEST LOOK
Emma Chamberlain in Mugler
Hand-painting on vintage couture redefined what it means to “take the theme seriously.” The artwork is on the body.
II - MOST RADICAL CONCEPT
Irina Shayk in Alexander Wang
Dispensing with fabric and wearing only jewellery is the most elegant possible negation of the very idea of fashion.
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III - HISTORIC MOMENT
Beyoncé, Jay-Z & Blue Ivy
Blue Ivy’s début, at 14, was the most moving scene of an evening full of spectacle.
IV - BEST ARTISTIC REFERENCE
Lena Dunham in Valentino
Artemisia Gentileschi finally arrives at the Met Gala. Centuries late, sublime arrival.
V - COUPLE OF THE NIGHT
Rihanna & A$AP Rocky
Margiela and rosé Chanel. Arrived late and stole everything. Anticipation as a style language.
VI - DÉBUT OF THE YEAR
Sunday Rose Kidman Urban in Dior
Jonathan Anderson for Dior, alongside mother Nicole. A discreet and absolutely impeccable entrance.
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The Met Gala of 2026 was a reminder that fashion, in its highest state, does not decorate the body — it interrogates the body. It questions its nakedness, its flesh, its social form. Under the theme Costume Art, some of the most important creators of our time responded with honesty: the garment is not accessory. It is argument.
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