The Body as a Stage for Fashion

Imagining the Met Gala through a Musical Lens

By Kylie Grebinar

Graphic by Zoe Lyko

Each May, musicians and other stars walk the stairs of the Met Gala, each representing a designer and paying homage to their personal style. This year, the exhibition focuses on costume art, with an emphasis on the relationship between fashion and the human form. This concept highlights three main facets of this relationship: bodies omnipresent in art (nude form), overlooked bodies (pregnant or aging), and universal bodies (anatomical bodies). With Saint Laurent sponsoring this year's exhibition, it's likely that many attendees will lean into the house’s signature sharp tailoring and minimalist, yet elegant designs.

While musicians have always filled seats at the Met, this year’s committee is particularly stacked with musical artists, including Sabrina Carpenter, Doja Cat, Sam Smith, Teyana Taylor, and Beyoncé serving as a Chair. These musicians’ attendance is confirmed, and more attendees will likely follow in the upcoming weeks. Frequent attendees such as Rihanna, A$AP Rocky, Lana del Rey, Pharrell Williams, and Billie Eilish are expected to return. Most attendees change the fashion houses they represent each year. The Met is becoming less about brand loyalty and more about interpretation of the theme.

Part of the fun of the Met Gala each year is making predictions about who might wear what. When considering this year’s theme, I immediately think of three visual references: Kim Kardashian’s “wet” dress from 2019, idealized forms as shown in Italian sculpture, and Picot’s and Delaroche’s paintings in the Louvre. Each of these artistic contributions represents continuations of the body in natural form which inspire me to think about how these concepts can be translated to fashion. Not everyone will take the theme in a conceptual direction. Instead, some previous musician attendees, like Future and Pharrell Williams, tend to choose a more basic, theme-adjacent look.

Some of my predictions:

Among likely attendees, Lana del Rey stands out as an artist who may interpret the theme through a melancholic classicism take, especially given her newest song “White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter,” which has a southern gothic feel. Her outfit could be a spin on this, in a way of representing decaying or dying beauty and the body.

A$AP Rocky and Rihanna may do a joint look again, focusing on the idea of the overlooked body, playing into a niche of familial roles. Rather than matching, they could again show up in coordinated outfits that represent that “overlooked body,” referencing familial roles or partnership as a form of embodiment. I could see Rihanna in sheer, sculptural drapery that mirrors classical Greek sculpture, while Rocky contrasts with a sharply tailored anatomical suit that emphasizes structure.

Rosalia has had a huge year in the music industry, especially with “Berghain” on her LUX album. This album blends operatic influences with industrial techno, creating a relationship between historical and modern representations of the body. Related to fashion, this could mean embodying the “universal body” with an outfit that merges the structured corset common in 18th-century undergarments with modern utilitarian materials such as leather. The silhouette could mimic ribs or other bone structure, highlighting the body as a structure and subject of a look.

FKA Twigs is an artist whose attendance could be an opportunity for a risky, extreme interpretation of the theme. When thinking of her music in relation to this year’s theme, I picture Thierry Mugler’s 1997 "Les Insectes" collection, where the human form transforms into something futuristic and fantastical and the body is no longer in its usual form: instead it’s something hybrid, almost otherworldly. The idea of the body as unnatural closely aligns with Twigs’ music, especially in songs like “Two Weeks” and “Kicks,” where the lyrics are intimate and the electronic beat makes the song sound perfectly distorted, like the voice is being pushed somewhere beyond human form. Playing into this would result in a Met look that challenges the human form, turning it into something experimental and slightly unsettling.

With a committee full of musicians this year, looks overall will likely lean more performative than in the past. Artists like Doja Cat have treated fashion with a conceptual lens in the past, while Sam Smith and Sabrina Carpenter might lean toward a more classic interpretation of the theme. This mix implies that we will see a wide variety of looks, with some attendees fully representing the body through artistic choices, and others interpreting it more subtly through silhouettes or fabrics. Whether through classical references or conceptual designs, this year’s Met Gala is bound to highlight musicians interpretations of what the body means in fashion today.