Zendaya leads dramatic glamour in nod to natural world at Met Gala 2024
The MET Gala 2024 – New York
Zendaya brought the drama to the 2024 Met Gala, delivering two striking fashion moments.
Every year the Met Gala – known as fashion’s biggest night – is held on the first Monday in May, to celebrate the opening of the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
This year, the exhibition is called Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, and the official dress code is the Garden Of Time.
While the exhibition might sound like an homage to Disney, it’s actually an exploration of around 250 extremely fragile and rare pieces from the Costume Institute’s collection. The focus is on fashion history, themed around three zones: land, sea and sky.
Embodying the dress code, actress Zendaya first walked up the steps in a dramatic ocean-blue and green tulle gown with a matching dramatic headpiece from Maison Margiela, styled by her long-time collaborator Law Roach.
The ensemble featured a hand-embroidered corsage, a hummingbird on her decolletage and a fascinator, which paid tribute to this year’s theme with a nod to the natural world.
While her second surprise look came at the end of the carpet, with the Hollywood star opting for vintage black Givenchy couture from the spring 1996 collection, featuring a floral bouquet hat with a long train.
One of the most powerful dressers on the red carpet today, Zendaya is fresh off some massive fashion moments – both from the Dune: Part Two press tour at the end of last year (during which she wore a vintage Thierry Mugler robot-inspired bodysuit) and the more recent Challengers press tour, which had many a tennis-themed look.
Some of her most memorable Met moments in the past include a Versace chainmail outfit with armour detailing, supposedly inspired by Joan of Arc, and a Cinderella-style ballgown that lit up on the pink carpet.
This year’s dress code is definitely one of the more difficult – some of the more obvious ones in the past have included Catholicism in fashion and camp styles.
It was always likely that celebrity guests would broadly fall into two camps: by wearing knock-out archival pieces, paying homage to fashion history, or picking up on the natural and floral elements of the theme.
Vogue editor-in-chief Dame Anna Wintour has been running the Met Gala since 1995, and this year her celebrity co-chairs are Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny and Chris Hemsworth.
A longtime presence on the Met Gala steps, Lopez attended her 14th Met Gala opting for a sheer and sparkling gown with a plunging neckline and a pronounced architectural bodice, from Schiaparelli Haute Couture.
Lopez most recently attended the 2023 event dedicated to the late Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld.
She wore a Ralph Lauren gown with a black velvet halterneck, an oversized bow trailing behind, a pale pink skirt and a sculptural veiled fascinator.
Meanwhile at the 2024 Met Gala, Puerto Rican star Bad Bunny wore a navy barathea jacket with a bouquet made up of the Flor de Maga, Puerto Rico’s national flower, a rose and a flax plant which Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger on in the original fairy tale.
He also wore a reverse stitched hat and sunglasses as part of the custom Maison Margiela fit.
The rapper’s most memorable Met Gala outfit came last year.
From the front, it looked like a fairly demure white suit from French label Jacquemus, but it soon revealed a completely open back and was paired with a 26-foot floral cape.
The exhibit at the Met Museum will run from May 10 until September 2 2024.
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