Rihanna, Jeremy Pope, Anne Hathaway and More Channel Karl Lagerfeld Love at the Met Gala
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Monday night’s Met Gala at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art was a bonafide lovefest for Karl Lagerfeld, whose work is showcased in the Costume Institute’s new exhibition, Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty, opening Friday.
With some Met Gala themes, the sartorial choices can be a tad all over the place, and decidedly rooted in causing a social-media frenzy. While the latter was certainly true with several looks (hello, Jared Leto), the overall vibe Monday evening was geared toward paying tribute not only to the many, many designs Lagerfeld produced during his six-decade career but also to the elements that defined the man himself and the design codes he happily embraced within the iconic houses he famously oversaw.
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Chanel, the gala’s primary sponsor, was the clear winner in that equation, not only in the number of stars dressed by the legendary French house — which included Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, Kristen Stewart, event co-hosts Penelopé Cruz and Dua Lipa, Sofia Coppola, Marion Cotillard, Lizzo and Margaret Qualley — but also via a plethora of references easily recognizable by even the most casual Chanel fan. From using camellias and pearls in abundance to boucle tweed and black and white pairings, these have been key signatures since Coco Chanel founded her label in 1910, and then embraced and modernized when Lagerfeld joined the house in 1983, dominated the trends on the Met Gala carpet.
In recent days, Lagerfeld’s selection as the subject of this year’s event has generated controversy on social media amid resurfaced biting comments about women and their weight, the #MeToo movement, immigrants and gay marriage. But the mood Monday night was celebratory.
Among the best looks on the Met Gala red carpet: Cardi B’s skirt fully embellished with black camellias, by Singapore-based designer Chen Peng and the oversized white camellias Rihanna wore both as a hood and a cape over a matching white silk gown, designed by Pierpaolo Piccioli for Valentino. Jeremy Pope, meanwhile, may have captured the night’s high-drama award in a floral-embroidered Balmain cape that stretched out to 10 meters, which Olivier Rousteing finished with a rendering of a hand-drawn illustration of Lagerfeld — ponytail and sunglasses included, naturally. Several stars also chose to capture the spirit of the designer’s personal style, including Jessica Chastain wearing black sunglasses and a platinum wig with her black Gucci gown and Simu Liu in Atelier Versace, wearing a pleated black jacket with matching pants and a high-collared white shirt and black tie, a look that had become a uniform for Lagerfeld for many years prior to his death in February 2019.
“We were really excited to get the invite,” Liu, who works with stylist Jeanne Yang, told The Hollywood Reporter on the red carpet. “Given who Karl was, getting to step into that aesthetic was really thrilling for me. Karl has so much to offer from an iconic design perspective, so I just wanted to replicate that and pay homage to it in any way that I could. So that became the high collar and the tie a bit popped out. He was a flashy man, and tonight I feel flashy, too.”
The jumping-off point for Amanda Seyfried’s custom look was Cartier’s Agrafe necklace in 18-karat rose gold, a draped multistrand design with hook-and-eye closures that take their cue from haute couture, which inspired Oscar de la Renta co-creative directors to design a nude-illusion dress crafted of more than 80,000 hand-draped bugle beads. “It’s very Karl, [very] ’70s Chloe,” Seyfried told THR.
Other references weren’t as literal, but they were embraced with a similar spirit. For Anne Hathaway, Donatella Versace focused on ivory boucle tweed and pearls, detailed with gold safety pins to create a gown that married Lagerfeld’s Chanel codes with Gianni Versace’s famed 1994 safety-pin dress worn by Elizabeth Hurley. For Kim Kardashian, Schiaparelli’s Daniel Roseberry that consisted of ropes of more than 50,000 freshwater pearls draped over a nude bra and corset, while at the other end of the spectrum, Maude Apatow was thrilled to learn that the original version of the satin and beaded cutout dress she wore, by Gabriela Hearst for Chloe (a label Lagerfeld oversaw for almost three decades), awaited her inside the exhibition. “Gabriela reimagined this dress from a design Karl produced in 1983, and it’s so cool to see what he did and how she created something new from that,” Apatow said. “Gabriela really is the coolest person on the planet, and now I can’t wait to take a photo next to the OG dress.”
Rachel Brosnahan likewise opted for a sheer look in a black Sergio Hudson column gown with Swarovski-crystal detailing. “I’m such a longtime fan of Sergio’s; he really knows his way around women’s bodies,” Brosnahan said. “And he’s been really inspired by Karl for a long time. He sent over some reference images, [including] a beautiful black mesh from a Karl for Chloe show in the ’90s, so we’re bringing back ’90s goth mesh glam to the carpet.” Of her sheer tulle hoop skirt, worn as a dress over a black sequined bikini, Janelle Monáe joked that the custom look by Thom Browne was the result of what might have happened “if Thom Browne, Karl Lagerfeld and Janelle Monáe had a threesome.”
Rami Malek, who often favors the work arising from the partnership of Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons for his red-carpet appearances, also took a thoughtful approach to his Met Gala style. “I love working with Mrs. Prada and Raf, and there was a collection from Fall/Winter 2012 that I thought kind of exemplified with Karl might do, but in a very Prada way,” Malek said of his crisp look of a white collarless shirt and vest with navy pants, paired with Cartier jewels. “So I asked them to inspire it based on that look, and they did, and I think they did it flawlessly.”
Carolina Herrera creative director Wes Gordon adopted a similar strategy for the black and white gown he crafted for model Adut Akech. “There are shared codes of elegance between Carolina Herrera and Mr. Lagerfeld,” he explained to THR. “So I took the idea of black and white to draw inspiration from those. The skirt is hundreds of handmade flowers, while the bodice is fully embellished with pearls, and it’s all brought to life by Adut, who’s a supermodel for the ages. Every designer today has been touched and inspired by Karl Lagerfeld at some point, so tonight is about celebrating and being honest about that.”
Indeed, many attendees brought their personal memories to the evening, painting a picture of Lagerfeld as a beloved friend and mentor.
“He was my neighbor in Paris,” explained Salma Hayek, who wore a crimson Gucci gown adorned with pearls at the shoulders, of Lagerfeld. “And not everybody can tell you this, but even if he went to the supermarket, he still did it as himself, with the ponytail and the sunglasses and the beautiful black and white suit. He never stopped being himself. He was so funny and so kind.”
Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin agreed. “We worked with Karl many times, and he was a life force,” Lurhmann said. “He was absolutely not nostalgic; he refused to look backward. Instead, he could be working with a book club down the road in the middle of the night while producing a shoot upstairs, and he’d grab you in the middle of the night and ask you to put on a white shirt while joining everyone for a dinner party downstairs. His mind simply didn’t work like anyone else’s.”
Martin wore a suit originally purchased from Chanel during Lagerfeld’s tenure, but with sustainability in mind, she had it refashioned by Australia-based house Romance Was Born prior to the Met Gala. “They reimagined the suit and re-embroidered it, so it’s become a lovely combination of Karl and Australia,” she said.
Other couples sharing Lagerfeld memories included Pierce Brosnan, wearing a jacquard-print tuxedo by Tom Ford, and his wife, Keely Shaye Smith, in a black beaded gown and matching tulle cape by Monique Lhuillier and carrying a beaded black Chanel evening bag. “Karl came and photographed our children with Keely and I years ago,” Brosnan recalled. “We spent an afternoon on the beach, back in the day before digital photography was coming into its own. We have great photographs we love because of Karl.”
Several fashion designers offered a behind-the-scenes look at how Lagerfeld embraced a mentoring role. “When I first got the job at Perry Ellis … I got a telegram from Karl Lagerfeld — that’s back in the days of telegrams — telling me what a special person Perry Ellis was and that he knew I would do a great job there,” recalled Marc Jacobs. Zac Posen likewise remembered the designer’s guidance: “I was fortunate to get great advice from him many times,” he said. “He photographed me, I got to spend time in his library. He really liked nurturing and working with new talent. Karl also was very loyal to people who worked with him for many years. There are people who started with him on his Patou team [in the late 1950s] who went with him through all his houses. He was fantastic.”
Of course, the night was not without its fantasy, thanks to one reference also closely connected to Lagerfeld: his beloved Burmese cat, Choupette. The designer’s well-known affection for his alabaster pet in his later years found its way into several statements on the carpet, not the least of which was courtesy of Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, whose sequined Chanel ensemble included a subtle motif that, when examined closely, indeed included a pattern of small silver cats splashed across the fabric. “I went for the cats,” Wintour noted to THR with a smile.
Saturday Night Live‘s Chloe Fineman, co-host of Vogue‘s livestream, carried a beaded pink cat as an evening bag, while Doja Cat wore a custom Oscar de la Renta gown crafted of feathers, sea glass and bugle beads, which finished with a hood embellished with feline ears; the rapper’s elaborate makeup also leaned into the Choupette homage. But no one went further than Jared Leto, who arrived on the carpet in a head-to-toe cat costume, complete with oversized kitty head fashioned to resemble Choupette. The actor removed the head after a few minutes for the photographers to reveal his identity, then shed the rest of the costume to show that underneath he was wearing a black tunic with matching pants and a cape with embellished shoulders, all courtesy of Lagerfeld’s eponymous line and coordinated by the label’s creative director, Hun Kim.
Amid a sea of looks that balanced the design codes Lagerfeld favored with an elegant wearability, Leto’s homage was easily the night’s most outrageous statement. But given the source of the actor’s inspiration, the man everyone was celebrating Monday evening would only have been delighted.
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