Traditionally, the large fashion houses dominate the Met Gala carpet. It’s expensive to put together a custom look, and brands backed by conglomerates tend to have the reach and capacity to dress more attendees. This year, though, independent brands came hot on the heels of the incumbents. 45.9 per cent of Met attendees were dressed by independent designers, versus 54.1 per cent by brands housed under fashion groups.
These figures, like the rest in this article, are based on Vogue’s roundup of all of the looks on the Met Gala 2025 red carpet. Vogue Business acknowledges that not every single look was captured, but endeavours to paint a picture of the composition of looks based on the data available.
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Of the top 10 brands at the Met Gala (based on the number of attendees each dressed), four are independent designers. Grace Wales Bonner dressed co-chair Lewis Hamilton, alongside FKA Twigs, Omar Apollo, Jeff Goldblum and more. Fear of God’s Jerry Lorenzo hosted a table, and dressed each guest in the brand, including Yara Shahidi, Spike Lee, Amy Sherald and Ryan Coogler. Saville Row designer Ozwald Boateng dressed stars from Burna Boy to Tems. And Sergio Hudson, 12 of whose looks were available in this data set, reportedly dressed 18 attendees in total, far more than is typical for even a major fashion house.
Thom Browne (owned by Ermenegildo Zegna Group) dressed 18 guests. The designer is known for his suiting, making him a fitting choice for the “Tailored for You” theme. Louis Vuitton (owned by LVMH) dressed the second-most guests — unsurprising, given Vuitton sponsored this year’s Gala. As a sponsor, it’s customary for a brand to dress a large number of guests, plus, this year, creative director Pharrell Williams was a co-chair.
Notably, all four of the independent designers featured in the top 10 are Black designers. Sergio Hudson, Fear of God’s Jerry Lorenzo, Ozwald Boateng and Grace Wales Bonner all made 10 or more Met looks. Of the six fashion house brands, Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing and Louis Vuitton’s Williams are both Black — meaning, of the top ten brands at the Met, six are helmed by Black designers.
The makeup of the overall Met looks paints a not-dissimilar picture. Based on the 316 looks identified on Vogue.com, about half (50.6 per cent) of the looks were designed by white designers. Black designers followed closely, having designed 42.4 per cent of Met Gala 2025 looks. The remaining looks were designed by Asian designers (5.7 per cent) and Latino (1.3 per cent). Of course, when you look at who helms the companies that own these brands, the picture looks a little different. But nonetheless, in an increasingly homogenised creative director landscape — the majority being white men — that almost half of this year’s Met looks were designed by Black designers is a win.
When you split designers by gender, things start to look less equal. More than 73 per cent of designers who created looks for this year’s Met were men; just 26.2 per cent were women. Perhaps for the first Costume Institute exhibition focused on menswear in 20 years, this is to be expected. But many of the men behind the looks weren’t designing menswear at all, but tailored womenswear. Though the looks may often be more grandiose than a runway or ready-to-wear collection, the Met Gala does reflect what’s going on in fashion. We’d do well to remember the Met’s 2023 Women Dressing Women exhibition as we look towards the Met Gala 2026. Here’s hoping the split is a little more even.
With data collection and analysis by Emily Forkan.
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