The Met Gala is known for its fashion spectacles, but artist Amy Sherald took it to another level: she showed up dressed as her own award-winning painting.
Yes, you read that right. Sherald recreated the young subject from her 2014 masterpiece, Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance), turning herself into a living, breathing, red-hat-wearing art piece.
If you're going to wear art, it might as well be your own. And if you're going to do that, you might as well go all in. Sherald, who co-chaired the gala, worked with designer Thom Browne to bring the vision to life. The original painting, a portrait of a young woman holding a teacup and gazing out with an almost unsettling directness, was inspired by Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
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Start Your News DetoxMiss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance) isn't just any painting; it won the National Portrait Gallery's Outwin Boochever Prize and even graced the cover of The New Yorker last year. So, for the Met Gala's "Fashion Is Art" theme, Sherald essentially said, "Hold my teacup."
A Living Masterpiece
Browne, who apparently needed very little convincing, told Vanity Fair that Sherald contacted him personally. He admitted it took a bit more effort than he anticipated, but for Sherald, he'd "jump through hoops." Which, for a designer recreating a painting, probably involved a lot of very specific fabric swatches and hat adjustments. They even tried on three different fascinators to match the painting's iconic red one.
It’s a flex that’s both brilliant and beautifully meta. Why just attend a party celebrating fashion as art when you can be the art? It's the kind of move that makes you wonder if future Met Gala attendees will start showing up as their favorite sculptures. Because apparently that’s where we are now, and honestly, we’re here for it.
