The Met Gala on the first Monday in May has always been a night devoted to fashion history, but at this year’s event, no less an authority in that area than the late André Leon Talley served as a frequent source of inspiration on the blue floral carpet.
This was fitting: Not only were pieces from Talley’s wardrobe (including a caftan by Patience Torlowei, one of his Morty Sills suits, and pieces of his Louis Vuitton luggage) on view as part of the Costume Institute’s spring 2025 exhibition, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” but the longtime Vogue editor also had a personal relationship with many of the guests. (After all, he started attending the gala in the 1980s.) Anne Hathaway, for starters, wore an embellished column skirt and button-up shirt that were designed for her by Carolina Herrera creative director Wes Gordon in a sartorial tribute to Carolina Herrera s longtime friendship with Talley.
See all the other ways Talley was referenced at the 2025 Met Gala, below:
Colman Domingo’s epic cape
Nobody did a cape quite like Talley, which made Met Gala 2025 co-chair Colman Domingo’s sweeping blue Valentino iteration just the thing to ring in the first Monday in May. In his Vogue livestream interview with Ego Nwodim and Teyana Taylor, Domingo described his other references for the look as “Othello the moor, kings, the color blue—a color that, when we were doing our research ... [we found] a free slave who wanted to wear his finest blue superfine wool suit. It gives you choir, it gives you king, all those moments.” Blue was also, notably, Domingo’s late mother’s favorite color.
Tessa Thompson’s church fan
Faith was a major part of Talley’s upbringing in North Carolina, as he recalled in his 2020 memoir The Chiffon Trenches, writing: “There was churchgoing, and there was churchgoing: Sunday school; Vacation Bible School; homecoming celebrations; baptism in the rain-filled concrete pool constructed just beyond the churchyard cemetery.” For her Met Gala 2025 look, actor Tessa Thompson spotlighted that aspect of Talley’s history by carrying an old-school church fan emblazoned with his face, telling Billboard that her look was meant to signify “the way fashion illustrates our dignity.”
Doechii’s tennis apparel
Talley was known for his love of tennis, as Anna Wintour recalled in a recent tribute to their long relationship, writing: “I thought of how even when he was doing something one might have found slightly over the top—playing tennis in full Vuitton, for instance—it was, for André, an act of supreme confidence, of total self-possession.” A few days before her Met Gala debut, musician Doechii chose to reference that confidence with a Vuitton-heavy homage to a famous photo of Talley.
Paloma Elsesser’s custom jacket
Elsesser stepped out at pre-Met hot spot the Mark Hotel last week in a custom leather jacket with a painted portrait of Talley on the back—though his spirit clearly guided her approach to the big night itself, as well. “I just thought constantly about what André Leon Talley would think of my look. I hope he approves,” Elsesser wrote of the Ferragamo dress she ultimately wore to the 2025 Met Gala.
Zac Posen’s sweet tribute
A week before the Met, designer Zac Posen posted a tribute to Talley on Instagram that read, in part: “I miss him deeply. I think about everything we shared. The Costume Institute. The history of fashion. The process of creation. We both believed in dress as a form of expression. As rebellion, as dignity, as a kind of language. Glamour was never just decoration. It was audacity. It was survival.
André was a fairy godfather to so many of us. To studios, to ateliers, to the whole community.
A godfather of couture, of invention, of the grand adventure of fashion as a living art. He made space for dreams. He carried the future forward.”
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