Gwendoline Christie’s admiration for the work of her longtime partner, the British designer Giles Deacon, goes way back. “I’ve wanted to wear Giles for the Met Gala since before I was even in a relationship with Giles, and that’s 13 years ago,” she tells Vogue. “So this has been a long time coming.”
Tonight, the Game of Thrones and Wednesday star arrived at the 2026 Met Gala in a show stopping Giles dress that pays homage to a trio of artists that Christie holds close to her heart. First, there’s John Singer Sargent a longstanding inspiration for Deacon, too whose “elegance” and “graceful line,” in Christie’s own words, is visible in the cinched waist and mermaid skirt of the dress’s silhouette. Then, there’s the work of the British surrealist photographer Madame Yevonde, whose pioneering work in the 1930s and ’40s Christie remembers discovering while assisting a friend studying at Central Saint Martins. “I was fascinated by her photos,” Christie recalls, noting that she also made the recent discovery that Yevonde was a distant relative of hers. (With her striking cheekbones and large, expressive eyes, you can see the resemblance.) Another inspiration? The countercultural New York photographer Ira Cohen, whose “hallucinogenic, distorted” images inspired the swirling strips of colour running diagonally across the dress.
But arguably the most striking creative detail of Christie’s look is the mask of her own face she paraded down the carpet created by none other than Gillian Wearing, the celebrated British YBA artist who won the 1997 Turner Prize. While Christie was involved in every aspect of the look—her encyclopedic knowledge of fashion and cultural history is seriously impressive, as she reels off the likes of Claude Cahun and Elizabeth I’s Rainbow Portrait as other influences on the look it turns out that the mask was actually Deacon’s idea. “I think Gillian's work is incredibly singular and fascinating, and has a very kind of unsettling beauty which I adore,” says Deacon.
“As I’m slowly finding in life, sometimes it works to ask for the impossible,” Christie adds. “We have mutual friends, and I contacted Gillian to ask, and she said yes immediately. And what I love about it is that it isn’t one thing: It’s not just the mask. It isn’t just a mirror. It's so many things. Is it a shield? Is it an expression?” Given Christie’s remarkable skill as a performer, it’s no surprise that she was able to sell every different possible interpretation on tonight’s red (or, more accurately, lush green) carpet. “It’s always fun to develop a persona [with Gwendoline], and bring movement into the conversation,” notes Deacon. “It expands the whole ‘fashion is art’ narrative into a very personal place, bringing the element of her artistic performance into it.”
Another key element of the look is the flamboyant headpiece that Deacon created in collaboration with the iconic milliner Stephen Jones, which featured an eruption of ostrich and pheasant feathers that had been artfully dyed to echo the shades of Christie’s dress. While the colors were all deliberately within the same range of tones with “lake red,” the shade of vibrant cerise especially beloved by Titian the fabrics were a riotous mix of hand-applied (and occasionally hand-torn) layers: “Georgettes and chiffons and double duchess satins and satin organzas and silk tulle and heavier net tulle,” Deacon explains. “I wanted to work in all these different elements so you could really see and feel the process.”
At the same time, the pair were keen to ensure that none of the references felt too literal. “You can see all of it in the dress, but wanted to do something very definitely authored,” Christie said. “Fashion is about what’s new, and so that’s what we wanted to do. We didn’t want to recreate something.”
Christie’s innate understanding of fashion is partly the result of her relationship with Deacon in his words, “she has a very specific eye, and she really understands the complexities of making something.” But it’s also due to her deep relationships within the industry, having been friends with designers like Kim Jones and John Galliano (the latter of whom she famously collaborated with on his seismic 2024 couture collection for Maison Margiela), as well as stylist Katie Grand. So it was Grand that she turned to for the “creative direction” on tonight’s look, as well as Pat McGrath, whose makeup artist Jenny Kuchera created her beauty look.
Between Deacon, Jones, Grand, and McGrath, you could describe Christie as having assembled her own kind of fashion Avengers. But it’s the relationships underpinning those collaborations that spark the magic, Christie says. “These are people that I truly adore, and I take great, great inspiration from. Tonight is about the relationship between fashion and art and that’s what this truly is.”
This article was originally published on Vogue US.
