Throughout the years, the Met Gala has been the site of some unforgettable celebrity moments. Below, take a walk down memory lane with this list of the craziest celebrity moments at the Met.
Tyla may be best known for her hit song “Water,” but she was all about sand at last year’s Met Gala, making her debut at the event in a Balmain gown that nodded to the night’s “Garden of Time” dress code by literally representing…the sands of time. (She even had a little hourglass purse!) The look was stunning and figure-hugging—so much so, in fact, that she needed a bit of help getting up the Met steps. Then, as Tyla entered the party, Olivier Rousteing brought out a big pair of shears to turn the dress into a mini.
It’s always fun to guess who will show up with the best Met Gala accessory, but Shannon won the contest handily last year by celebrating “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” with a calfskin Balenciaga handbag designed to look exactly like a…bag of chips. Ceci n’est pas une prop comedy joke!
The Met Gala isn’t exactly known for attracting attendees who play it sartorially safe, but Doja Cat took fashion transformation to a whole new level with her 2023 look: she arrived dressed as the late Karl Lagerfeld’s beloved cat Choupette in a custom hand-beaded gown and hood with ears put together by Oscar de La Renta co-creative directors Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia. Meow, indeed!
In a move that delighted fans and enraged fashion conservators in equal measure, for 2022’s “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” gala, Kim Kardashian turned to the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum in Orlando to borrow a very special piece: the form-fitting Jean-Louis dress that Marilyn Monroe wore to serenade John F. Kennedy on his birthday in 1962. “Everything had to be specifically timed and I had to practice walking up the stairs,” Kardashian told Vogue of the strict precautions in place to protect the dress, which had been sold at auction for an astonishing $4.8 million in 2016.
Tapped to co-chair 2021’s “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” gala with Naomi Osaka, Amanda Gorman, and Billie Eilish, Timothée Chalamet arrived at his very first Met with—what else?—a literal throng of screaming fans in his wake. In a work of virtual performance art live-streamed on Instagram, Chalamet strolled to the museum from the former Frick Madison, where he’d collaborated with French artist JR and the composer Nicholas Britell on a dazzling installation. Needless to say, people were all too eager to follow along—both virtually and in person.
Why stick to jewellery or watches when you can walk down the Met Gala carpet holding your own head as the ultimate accessory? That’s exactly what Leto did in 2019, courtesy of Gucci (the severed heads first appeared on the fall 2018 runway), and it was both terrifying and impossible to look away from.
It was the moment nobody expected: On the red carpet for the “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” gala, rapper 2 Chainz proposed to partner Kesha Ward. Ward thankfully said yes, as the crowd of photographers snapped and cheered away—but not so fast. As it turned out, 2 Chainz had also popped the question to Ward five years earlier, at the BET Awards. (What can we say: The man likes a grand gesture!) The pair would finally marry in August.
For “Heavenly Bodies,” Katy Perry descended upon the Met wearing a custom Versace creation complete with angel wings. It was one of the night’s more meme-worthy ensembles—and the best part was that it needed an open-top vehicle to get to the venue. Ahead of the red carpet, the singer was spotted taking a casual drive on the Manhattan streets, her theatrical wings out for all normal pedestrians to see.
Several weeks before attending the Met Gala celebrating “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between,” Smith chopped off his bleached dreadlocks for a role in the film Life in a Year. As it turned out, they would find a second life on the red carpet, where he carried them in his hand. “I couldn’t bring my sister as a date,” Smith explained somewhat cryptically at the time, “so I brought my hair.” Perhaps in homage to her viral hit, “Whip My Hair”?
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The Italian designer spent her 61st birthday at the 2016 Met Gala. Her close friend Lady Gaga thankfully made sure it was a memorable one, surprising Donatella with a three-tired, gold-dipped cake emblazoned with the Versace logo.
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Eagled-eyed fans received their very first sign of Taylor Swift and Tom Hiddleston’s summer romance at the 2016 Met Gala, where the pair was captured on camera flirtatiously shimmying at the Temple of Dendur.
After Beyoncé premiered her groundbreaking visual album Lemonade, the singer was subject to a lot of speculation, particularly regarding the state of her marriage to Jay Z. About a week later, Queen Bey surprised everyone by appearing solo on the Met’s red carpet, wearing a nude latex Givenchy number (cue the Internet jokes about whatever happened to “Becky with the good hair”).
Rihanna might have kicked off a meme bonanza at the 2015 Met Gala in her golden Guo Pei fur-trimmed dress, but her other biggest moment of the evening was opening the performance of her song “Bitch Better Have My Money” on top of a dinner table.
How do you know you’re really rock royalty? When you can show up to the Met Gala in DIY T-shirts.
If Princess Di showed up to the Met Gala in 1996; does that mean there’s still hope of an appearance by the Princess of Wales in the future?
It’s hard to believe this photo of Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, and Kate Moss was taken over two decades ago. What makes it even better? They’re all still Met Gala mainstays.
Decades before her inimitable style became the focus of the Met’s 2001 exhibit “Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years—Selections from the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum,” our First Lady of Fashion attended the Met Gala as a guest, in 1979.
