Sauce’s best dressed list at Met Gala 2024

It’s the first Monday of May which can only mean one thing in the world of beauty, fashion and entertainment…The Met Gala. Like most fashion-centric events, the Met Gala is a parade of eccentricity, showcasing aesthetic craftsmanship on a global scale. This year’s dress code: The Garden of Time is an interpretation on the Met’s exhibition Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, which if you’re like us could quite literally mean many things, with designer names Loewe, Balmain, Maison Margiela, Thom Browne making multiple appearances. The showcase of red-carpet guests featured an eclectic expression of this year’s dress code, leaving many of this year open to interpretation. Designers used a mix of earthly koha, from flower petals to sand, pearls and wood grain to molten gold-plated floristry and bejewelled root vegetables.

This Met Gala theme comes with an inherent and longstanding salute to the philosophy aesthetics and beauty, while also acknowledging that without art there is very little to celebrate. And so…it’s only right that we take a peek at just a few of the chic arrivals on fashion’s most infamous night out. 

Chloe Sevigny in…mourning

A very Sevigny-esque reading on eclecticism, amalgamating Victorian-era mourning (not morning) beauty and hair. Although Chloe Sevigny is an icon in her own right, having been invited to the Met over ten times taking on multi-textural, multi-disciplinary themes of rebirth, reawakening, and decomposition while Dilara Fındıkoğlu incorporated repurposed Victorian fabrics into this creation, the hair and beauty, the braided hair and pearl accents not only complemented the overall look but held true to Sevigny’s subversive roots (quite literally). 

Once is a bonus, but twice is nice 

2024’s co-chair Zendaya at this point is the ‘queen of the theme’, working impeccably with her inimitable stylist Law Roach. Her first look a Maison Margiela Artisanal by John Galliano was a predictable haute couture vibe erring on a kind-of Gothic-but-not expression of transgression. Did we expect more? Maybe. But did she deliver the second time in vintage Givenchy also by Galliano, adorned with no less than a bouquet on her head? Yes, yes she did. 

Carving out confidence

One thing about this year’s Met Gala is that women of colour came to win. They owned. They conquered. They left NO CRUMBS. Tyla wearing custom Balmain, an ode to the sands of time exclaims her as a vision of this next generation of South African global talent. Not just a darling of desire, Tyla’s vision of ephemerality has now become here to stay as a walking (or in this case carried) fashion statement. 

Aurora James wore her own custom corseted design Brother Vellies. This Canadian activist and fashion designer is named after the Sleeping Beauty herself, so returning to the Met Gala for this year’s theme was clearly a no-brainer. The choice of wooden carved corsetry delivers on the mixing of elements, earth, land, sky, wearing a mixture of pearls and silk, reawakening a conversation on textural conventions.

Taylor Russell’s face card knows no bounds. But her first appearance at this year’s Met Gala does not disappoint. Wearing another wood-grain sculptured Loewe turtleneck gown contrasted with a silk crépe circle skirt, she’s a designer stan who gets what works for her.

A standing ovation for the sari

Alia Bhatt wearing Sabyascachi is more than an honourable mention. The timelessly chic look is an homage to the beauty and the intricacies of South Asian feminine dressing. After all, South Asian women getting their turn is something we’ll always support. 

Ancestral Accolades

Lily Gladstone never fails to wear more than a dress, but a profound and meaningful arrangement of constellations. Her black corseted dress by Gabriela Hearst featured embroidery using recycled silver stars by native jeweller Keri Ataumbi: an ode to the people of Kiowa, Blackfeet and other Plains ancestry that come together as part of her own indigenous tapestry. 

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Mona Patel had a show stopping moment in her Iris van Herpen dress and arm Piece by Casey Curran. She was styled by the Law Roach who also styles his star client Zendaya. The whole thing was impeccably done.

Give Harris Reed own red carpet, the British designer was a vision in their own creation, perhaps a little repetitive in terms of theme, but the arrow headpiece halo and vintage wallpaper jumpsuit is exactly the kind of drama we needed. 

Honourable MENtions and more:

Trust Olivier Rousteing to wear a sculptural sand cast of his own chiselled face. Not even AI art could have predicted this. 

Colman Domingo, give this actor every award. Domingo kills it every time, wearing a custom Willy Chavaria suit, replete with cape – a tribute to late and iconic men before him, Andre Leon Talley and Chadwick Boseman.

Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan maybe didn’t quite murder the dancefloor or this look in Burberry, but at least he stepped out of the boring tuxedo effect. It’s giving Irish leprechaun, but at least it’s giving. 

Images : Vogue.com & Elle.com
Words : Nancy Johnson-Hunt