Five Vogue editors, a stylist, a handful of assistants, one messenger, a publicist, a hotel electrician, and an It-girl model on the rise walk into a fitting room with a screw-on dress.
That is not the beginning of a joke, but the making of Amelia Gray Hamlin’s major 2024 Met Gala look. The model wore the Undercover, spring 2024 light-up terrarium dress by Jun Takahashi—its sister dress, in pink, is currently in the “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” exhibition at the Met. But spectacular as the moment was, it took quite a bit of work and many, many hands to pull off.
“Anything for Vogue, but damn, that was one of my harder gigs,” said Hamlin on the phone yesterday. “The right side of my body still hasn’t recovered, but it’s fine!” For context, the dress does not function like a regular frock—you can’t just zip it up. There’s a corset, an under dress, and then the encasing, which is split in half and screws on at the sides. The skirt has two circular windows through which the flowers inside can be arranged, and it all gets covered by two strips of tulle that come from the bottom of the encasing that have to be draped in a specific way before meeting the bustier. It’s an undertaking, for sure. “But it was a dream to wear and an honor to carry that torch,” said Hamlin. This is, after all, one of the most memorable dresses in recent memory. While Hamlin’s was not a live terrarium, the piece on the runway was a feat of ingenuity with its live plants and butterflies. Takahashi might have been working through his feelings of grief, but from his pain came something wonderful, and Hamlin at the Met gave it its rightful place in fashion history.
Gray’s first thought when Vogue approached her to wear the dress as a guest of the magazine was, “how am I going to wear that?” she said with a laugh. “But then the excitement took over because you are going to the Met, and I’m someone who loves a challenge, and I’m told that this has become my reputation in the industry, which we love,” she added.
“I remember walking into the room and thinking, oh my God, what have I gotten myself into?” said Danyul Brown, Hamlin’s stylist. The main stressor, both agreed, was that the dress is not alterable, so if Gray did not fit, it was simply not going to work. “It was my Cinderella moment,” she said. “I flew from Marseille and Danyul flew from Los Angeles straight to the fitting; it just had to work.”
Gray and Brown came to the Vogue offices last week to try on the look. “Everyone was so quiet at first as we waited to see if it was going to work,” recalled Hamlin, “but it was such a hilarious experience. Willow [Lindley, Vogue Fashion Market Collaborations Director] and Virginia [Smith, Global Head of Fashion Network] were on the ground literally being mechanics.” Once the dress fit and every screw was fastened, Hamlin did a test run, walking up the stairs to the office’s cafeteria to confirm she’d be able to walk up the museum’s. “I was grateful to have done this at Vogue, it was reassuring that the top fashion people were also confused and trying to figure it out,” Hamlin added.
The test of fire came the day of. The dress was to be couriered from Vogue to the Carlyle Hotel, where Hamlin was getting dressed. As things go on busy days, there are delays. It didn’t arrive until around 1PM, giving Brown little margin for error. “The box was the size of a small house,” he joked, “and we had not tested the lights.” When they did, of course, they were not working. “I did not go to fashion school for this,” quipped Brown, “this required a degree in engineering.” And so the stylist called the front desk to find an electrician, who did his magic while Hamlin was in the shower. “It took a village, but we had the best villagers,” said Brown of dressing Hamlin, “we had 15 people helping her get in.”
Needless to say, the dress is heavy. “Ignorance is bliss, so I don’t actually know how many pounds,” said Hamlin. What she does know, however, is that it was so heavy that they had to make a couple of hip pads to cushion the pressure on her body. “The posing with my hands on my hips is really mostly me holding it up,” said the model, “thank God for Shawn [Buchanan] and Lucas, the two incredible men that helped me get up those stairs.” Buchanan also happens to be the man currently going viral online for lifting Tyla up the Met steps.
“We sighed in relief when she got up the steps,” added Brown. But the story didn’t end there. Hamlin forgot to bring her screwdriver with her in her purse—because that’s the first thing one thinks of to put in your bag when leaving for a gala. “I of course did not bring my screwdriver, like I said I was going to on TikTok, but God bless the dressers backstage who took me out with scissors,” she said.
All’s well that ends well on the First Monday in May. “I didn’t even realize how major of a moment it was going to be,” said Hamlin, “I just left my house for the first time since I got home on Monday night, and so many people told me that they loved my outfit.” Hamlin will never forget her first Met Gala, but will most likely wear something with a zipper next year.
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