Honestly, no one does fancy dress quite like the Brits. When it comes to the Met Gala, the country’s creatives wrap their arms around the theme and all but skip toward the red carpet, leaving a trail of eccentric references like Hansel and Gretel tidbits for us to truffle out and delight over. This year’s “Sleeping Beauties: Awakening Fashion” exhibition and its accompanying “The Garden of Time” dress code positively encouraged our fairytale school of thought.
Take rising London talent Steve O Smith, who dived into the world of Cy Twombly for Eddie Redmayne and Hannah Bagshawe’s painterly looks. Inspired by the artist’s Peony series, Smith diluted acrylic paint, graphite stick, and pencil to create fluid drawings on paper, which he then translated onto a wool coat mounted on sheer silk organza and matching trousers for Eddie, and a silk organza gown built over a tulle skirt and corset for Hannah, using a special technique called relief appliqué. Not your average perennials, then.
Erdem Moralioglu also subverted the idea of florals for spring by reimagining the bouquets that opera singers, such as his fall 2024 muse Maria Callas, receive at the end of their performances. In Erdem’s world, blooms have bite, and so he fashioned a pink gown for Lily James featuring black vines creeping up the crushed satin, rather than it simply coming up roses. “The Met Gala is a really interesting moment when different creative spheres intersect—the most successful looks are those that are quite fearless,” Moralioglu told Vogue of the thought process behind the creation for his “force of nature” friend Lily.
Jodie Turner-Smith’s hand-embroidered white Burberry dress festooned with 150,000 faux pearls made her “feel like a beautiful English garden,” thanks to the silk organza faux feather wildflowers sprouting up on the divine halter-neck design. “The details on the dress represent the delicateness [of florals], but the pearl underdress feels like an armor, and indicates a strength behind the fragility of the tulle and organza,” said Turner-Smith, who did her homework on the theme and JG Ballard’s sci-fi short story “The Garden of Time,” which informed the dress code. “It’s such a huge way to begin a collaborative relationship,” added the actor of popping her Burberry cherry at the ball.
Victoria Beckham went the extra mile and created a unique shade of “faded rose” to match Bridgerton star Phoebe Dynevor’s skin tone. In a first for Beckham, who has attended the Met Gala four times but never created a custom look for a star, VB’s atelier painstakingly stitched hundreds of hand-cut flowers onto tulle and archival lace to create an ethereal confection befitting a true English rose. SS Daley, too, enjoyed a bucolic Met first, with his pearl posy-peppered custom suit inspired by vintage British book covers for comedian Alex Edelman.
Not all of London’s capital crop ambled through the countryside for inspiration. The hand-embellished crystal daisy detailing with which Simone Rocha embellished her tulle-encased, corseted dress for the actor Eve Hewson was actually inspired by preserved garments, such as Queen Victoria’s mourning dress, which the Irish designer uncovered during the making of her bewitching fall 2024 collection. Incidentally, Chloë Sevigny chose Victorian “mourning hair” to offset her Dilara Findikoglu dress, which the Central Saint Martins alum crafted from repurposed Victorian fabrics to touch on the ideas of decay and rebirth. “Honestly, I’m still a little confused by the theme, but I am interpreting it in my own way,” shared Sevigny. Her collaboration with Findikoglu worked.
New York-born honorary Brit Conner Ives—who swapped Central Park for Central Saint Martins in 2014—also looked to the past, delving deep into China’s Qing dynasty for his look for Ivy Getty. The upcycling fanatic turned 300-year-old tapestries, featuring ornate peacock embroidery, into what his date called “just a gorgeous dress—no gimmicks.” Meanwhile, Harris Reed borrowed hand-painted wallpaper scraps from Fromental for a sustainable demi-couture gown befitting Demi Moore.
London’s biggest design stars propping up Paris and Milan houses found further ways of weaving playfulness into Met Gala dress seams. Jonathan Anderson 3D-printed Charles James’s famous 1951 “Petal” ball gown onto a striking white silk Loewe dress for Ambika Mod using a trompe-l’œil technique. “It’s a dress displaying a dress in a way,” said the One Day actor of her “really, really cool” debut Met look. Fellow gala newcomer Raye, meanwhile, asked Kim Jones to fashion her a Fendi gown, featuring a “snatched” corset and a blooming silver skirt to make her feel “elegant and beautiful” on a somewhat intimidating night. (Sips of wine and a bossa nova playlist were Raye’s other tips for keeping pre-ball jitters at bay.)
All this is before British vintage came out to play. With a sprinkling of Alexander McQueen—hello, EmRata in Lee’s 1998 Givenchy sheer showgirl mini—the homegrown fashion contingent brought welcome grit to a red carpet where glamor reigns supreme. As Reed, who imagined his date Demi as a flower in a fleeting moment of full bloom before wilting, noted: it’s important to “represent the power that creativity has within the United Kingdom and remember that design is about dreams and fantasy and empowering people. Yes, it’s a business, but it needs to be art.”
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