The 2026 Met Gala turned the famous steps of The Metropolitan Museum of Art into a living exhibition on Monday night, with the theme Fashion Is Art anchoring a procession of gowns, sculptures and theatrical looks on the Upper East Side. The event celebrated the opening of the Costume Institute’s newest exhibit, Costume Art, and drew a guest list led by co-chairs Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Anna Wintour.
Beyoncé arrived in a custom sculptural skeleton gown by Olivier Rousteing, while Janelle Monáe wore an animatronic Christian Siriano piece with moving butterflies. Sabrina Carpenter chose a Dior gown made with real film strips from Sabrina, the Audrey Hepburn film, and Anok Yai appeared in a Balenciaga look inspired by Mater Dolorosa. Yai said she wanted to look like a statue for the event, a line that matched the showpiece mood that has long defined the night.
Madonna’s outfit featured a pirate ship-inspired headpiece, Jessica Kayll wore hand-painted Monet-style silks, and seven ladies-in-waiting held the fabric in a recreation of Leonora Carrington’s 1945 The Temptation of St. Anthony. Kendall Jenner wore a custom piece inspired by the Hellenistic movement and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. The gala began in 1948, when publicist Eleanor Lambert first started the event that would grow into fashion’s most watched night.
That splendor landed against a louder off-stage argument. The 2026 gala faced controversial remarks over Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez serving as honorary co-chairs and major financial backers, a partnership that drew backlash from labor activists and the Labor is Art movement. The clash was hard to miss: a celebration of craft, labor and museum spectacle powered in part by two of the world’s richest figures.
This year’s Met did what it has always done at its best: it made fashion look inseparable from art while reminding the crowd that the politics of money and labor can walk the same carpet as couture. The question going forward is not whether the gala can produce spectacle. It is whether it can keep calling itself a tribute to art while the arguments around who funds that art grow louder every May.
