Can we please take a moment to admire Nicole Kidman‘s 2023 Met Gala look?
Accompanied by husband Keith Urban, the movie star arrived on the carpeted steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art wearing a majestic blush pink ball gown, which she previously wore from 2004 Chanel No. 5 ad. The piece featured silver sequins, a center high-leg slit, a sweeping train dusted with boa feathers, and a delicate one-shoulder tulle cape.
Urban, who wore a classic black tux with a white dress shirt, was photographed admiring his wife on the steps. The two weren’t afraid to flaunt some PDA, with the couple holding hands and exchanging a quick peck as they ascended the stairs.
Tonight’s theme, “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” pays homage to the life and legacy of the late Chanel creative director.
The Costume Institute describes the spring 2023 exhibition as an exploration of “the work of Karl Lagerfeld. Focusing on the designer’s stylistic vocabulary as expressed in aesthetic themes that appear time and again in his fashions from the 1950s to his final collection in 2019, the show will spotlight the German-born designer’s unique working methodology.”
The exhibition will additionally showcase about 150 of Lagerfeld’s designs, as well as some of his sketches, both of which “underscore his complex creative process and the collaborative relationships with his premières, or head seamstresses. Lagerfeld’s fluid lines united his designs for Balmain, Patou, Chloé, Fendi, Chanel, and his eponymous label, Karl Lagerfeld, creating a diverse and prolific body of work unparalleled in the history of fashion.”
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Doja Cat showed up to the 2023 Met Gala in New York City Monday dressed as Choupette, the cat of the late designer Karl Lagerfeld.
The theme of this year’s Met Gala is “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” the same name as the exhibition which opens at the Met on May 5.
“The show spotlights Lagerfeld’s unique working methodology, focusing on the late designer’s stylistic vocabulary as it was expressed in ‘through lines’—aesthetic and conceptual themes that appear time and again—in his fashions from the 1950s to his final collection in 2019,” the museum’s description reads.
Doja and her team did their best to ensure that her outfit was unveiled at the right time, using umbrellas to hide her as she exited her hotel.
Doja took the role so seriously that she conducted a whole interview where she meowed with Emma Chamberlain for Vogue.
The musician also spoke with La La for Vogue about attending her first Met Gala.
Jared Leto also paid tribute to Choupette with a full body costume, which kept his identity shrouded in mystery until he removed the head. The actor/musician had a full outfit change on the carpet, switching into a black ensemble.
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Honoring Karl
On the first Monday in May and for more than 70 years, the prestigious Costume Institute at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has held the same ritualistic – some might call it a circus – fund-raising gala to which the fashion and entertainment world flock. The stars, flamboyantly and extravagantly dressed, strut their stuff in the framework of an assigned theme: This year, it was to pay tribute to the late Karl Lagerfeld – for which Rihanna and A$AP Rocky went the extra mile.
Lady of the Camellias
The singer Rihanna, who is pregnant with her second child, made her appearance covered in camellias, in homage to the fashion house for which Karl Lagerfeld worked for 36 years. The camellia became one of Chanel’s symbols in 1913, three years after the fashion brand was founded, when Coco Chanel was photographed on a beach in Etretat, on France’s north coast, with a flower attached to her belt. The designer loved it for its aesthetic purity but also for its olfactory neutrality: Like the dahlia, the camellia is one of the rare flowers without any smell.
Black cat
In a nod to Lagerfeld, Rihanna also made sure to hide behind a pair of shades. The designer never showed his eyes and liked to say: “Dark glasses are like eyeshadow. They make everything look younger and pretty.” However, as far as we know, he never chose to wear cat-eyes sunglasses with false lashes.
Made to measure
On Rihanna’s arm was her partner, the rapper A$AP Rocky, who was also
I admit: I never entirely drank the Karl Lagerfeld Kool-Aid. I was not one of those critics (and there were some) who would clutch their breast, shriek “genius!” and swoon after every show.
I often felt that for every extraordinary piece the designer created for Chanel or Fendi — by the time I started in fashion, his career at Chloé was at an end — there would be another clunker of a dress or a suit: unflattering, frumpy, kind of awkward. I found the set-building he did for his Chanel shows in the latter years (the supermarkets, rocket ships and icebergs in the Grand Palais) not just a smart social media move (which it was) but too often an egregious display of a bottomless budget and sleight of hand to distract from what was on the runway. Sure, that tweed sweatsuit made that model look like a Real Housewife — but everyone was looking at the double-C branded pasta on the faux megamart shelf instead!
Once I got spoken to by the Chanel press office for not fully “understanding” Lagerfeld’s vision. But as I wrote in the designer’s obituary (he died in 2019), while he unquestionably changed the business of the industry — its marketing, its branding, its very structure — thanks to his ability to take on a heritage house like Chanel and reinvent it with the detritus of its own codes, I didn’t think he really changed wardrobes. He didn’t give the world a new silhouette, or an expression of identity, the way Coco Chanel herself did, with the bouclé suit, or Christian Dior, with the New Look, or Saint Laurent, with Le Smoking, the tuxedo suit for women.
All of which is to say that when I heard the Metropolitan Museum of Art would