Kylie Jenner Takes the Costume Institute: Revisiting the Star’s Met Gala Looks
By her own admission, Kylie Jenner has spent the last six years more focused on motherhood than la mode, but, as she tells Giles Hattersley in British Vogue’s September 2024 issue, she’s finally found her fashion feet over the past 18 months. “I’ve been way more into the fashion world and fashion week, and it’s been so much fun,” she explains. “I’m like, ‘Why didn’t I do this sooner?’ Every time I go to Paris things just happen. I love the fast pace. It’s a whole new world.”
And yet Jenner has, since 2016, been a fixture at the Met Gala, ascending the museum’s steps in everything from bedazzled Balmain to vampish Versace. In honor, find all of her looks from first Mondays in May past, below.
Getty Images1/72016
Jenner made her Met Gala debut in 2016, when the Costume Institute devoted its blockbuster spring exhibition to the theme of Manus X Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology. Kris, Kylie and Kim all wore creations by Olivier Rousteing for Balmain. “I really trust him when it comes to making a statement on the carpet,” the then 18-year-old Kylie told American Vogue of the designer and family friend.
Getty Images2/72017
The 2017 gala’s Rei-Kawakubo-for-Comme-des-Garçons theme was met with some unusual interpretations on the red carpet. Kylie, for one, wore her first (but not her last) fringed Versace look with an ice blonde wig. Now 19, she had just announced the premiere of Life of Kylie, with the cameras following her as she prepared for the Met.
Getty Images3/72018
Jenner welcomed her daughter, Stormi, on 1 February 2018 before making her couple debut on the red carpet with then partner Travis Scott three months later. The pair both wore Alexander Wang for the Heavenly Bodies-themed event, with Kylie pairing her flowing gown with a pair of crystal sunglasses.
Getty Images4/72019
Twenty-nineteen’s Costume Institute exhibition, Camp: Notes on Fashion, clearly chimed with Jenner, who vamped it up in Versace trimmed with painted ostrich feathers. The tangerine dream to her lavender haze? Kendall, who leaned even further into the showgirl aesthetic with her own choice of Versace design for the pink carpet.
Getty Images5/72022
Three years later, Jenner was back at the Met for the In America: An Anthology of Fashion exhibition. She chose to pay tribute to Chicago native Virgil Abloh, who passed away on 28 November 2021, by wearing a twist on a wedding gown courtesy of Off-White paired with a netted veiled trucker hat.