NEW YORK (AP) — Fashion’s biggest night got underway Monday at the Met Gala in a rainy Manhattan.
This is the first Met Gala to focus exclusively on Black designers, and the first in more than 20 years to have a menswear theme. This year’s theme is based on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s spring exhibit, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.”
Among the hosts are Pharrell Williams, Lewis Hamilton, Colman Domingo and A$AP Rocky. LeBron James was made honorary chair but will not attend because of a knee injury.
The guest list includes about 450 people from tech, sports, art, entertainment and more.
Vogue’s Anna Wintour is the gala’s mastermind. The gala raises the bulk of the budget for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.
Rain fell in the city as guests began walking the carpet but Rihanna shut down a rainy Met Gala in a pinstripe look and a huge hat, her newly announced baby bump on display after announcing her pregnancy with baby No. 3 earlier in the day.
Her Marc Jacobs look included tied sleeves of a men’s suit that served as a bustle behind her as she posed for the cameras, the last to walk the carpet as usual. Her hair hung long in a mermaid twist behind her.
Men’s suiting and tailoring was the evening’s theme. It came complete with a tuxedoed choir and lots of women rocking pinstripes and other men’s detailing. Emma Chamberlain, Zendaya, Teyana Taylor and many other women went with traditional men’s detailing.
Chamberlain and Zuri Hall were among those who wore sleek, sexy gowns that play on men’s suiting in pinstripes as they walked up the grand steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Zendaya, a co-host last year, wore a perfectly tailored white trouser suit with a matching wide-brim hat from Louis Vuitton.
The menswear vibe for women was frequent and expected, “women wanting to maintain a traditionally feminine dress silhouette while still respecting the theme,” said William Dingle, director of style for blackmenswear.com, a cultural impact agency that focuses on uplifting Black men.
Alicia Keys and her husband, Swizz Beatz, leaned WAY in on the pinstripes in red. She rocked a head of bejeweled braids. He rocked a do-rag.
Doja Cat, always fearless when it comes to fashion, donned a Marc Jacobs bodysuit look with orange and black wildcat detailing and broad-shouldered pinstripes. Taylor went for a stunning Zoot Suit look with a red, feather-adorned top hat and a huge matching cape dripping with flowers and bling. She collaborated with famed costumer designer Ruth E. Carter.
The Zoot was popularized in Harlem in the 1940s.
Madonna, “no stranger to gender-bending fashion,” Dingle said, showed up in a monochrome taupe tuxedo clutching a cigar. It was Tom Ford by Haider Ackermann, the designer who took over when Ford stepped aside.
Kylie Jenner, in Ferragamo, mimicked men’s tailoring in a gray and black corseted look, while sister Kim Kardashian went embossed black leather dandy, vamping under a tall black hat. Her custom look was by Chrome Hearts. It was low slung and open at the hip with broad straps at the back.
Sister Kendall Jenner was in an elegant skirt and jacket, the most subdued of the three. The designer was the British-Nigerian-Brazilian designer Torishéju Dumi.
‘White Lotus’ stars arrive on the carpet
Several cast members from the recently wrapped Season 3 of “The White Lotus” turned out on the blue carpet, including Aimee Lou Wood and Walton Goggins, Patrick Schwarzenegger and Lisa.
Goggins and Lisa walked separately, but Wood and Schwarzenegger spoke to Vogue before walking the carpet together.
Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan makes his Met Gala debut
Shah Rukh Khan is a Bollywood megastar, with legions of fans the world over. At 59, with decades of fame under his belt, he’s finally making his Met Gala debut — in Sabyasachi.
Bollywood celebrities aren’t strangers to the Met Gala, but it’s rarer for a male actor to appear. In recent years, Alia Bhatt, Deepika Padukone and crossover star Priyanka Chopra Jonas have represented the Hindi film industry at the annual fundraiser.
“I’ve not done too many red carpets, I’m very shy,” Khan, toting a cane and necklace with a large K, told Vogue. He credited his attendance to Sabyasachi, and said he informed the designer he only wore black and white.
“Just to give you a little bit of context, Shah Rukh Khan is probably one of most famous men in the world,” the designer, who sported a literal feather in his cap, said. “And his fan following is legendary, and we nearly had a stampede outside of our hotel when he came out.”
Diana Ross arrives in a massive train
Allow Diana Ross to collect her flowers. The Motown icon arrived in a massive ivory train as a starstruck Zendaya — and everyone else — looked on. In some ways, it recalled the memorable yellow train wore by Rihanna a decade ago — the Guo Pei couture gown that lit up the internet at the 2015 Met Gala.
Ross had six men helping her with her train at the top of the Met steps. She fanned herself from the heat as they helped her remove her long feathered train. She said the dress was vintage and she’d had it forever.
The inside of the train, she told Vogue, had the names of “all my children and my eight grandchildren” embroidered in it.
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