Every year, the Met Gala's red carpet is a place where celebrities are encouraged to pull out all the stops. Honestly, so long as you honour the year’s theme, almost every other fashion rule can be thrown out the window.
But mind you, this wasn't always the case. For decades, the Met was a polite evening for many men – throw on a black tie, wear a tuxedo in the same colour palette.
— black tie for the men, no exceptions, no imagination. The tuxedo was the costume.
The risk-takers, when they appeared, stood out like sore thumbs. In 2001, Alan Cumming climbed the steps in a red tartan kilt — the theme that year was "Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years," which had nothing to do with anything he was wearing. Then, in 2006, Alexander McQueen turned up in matching tartan with his date, Sarah Jessica Parker — a Scottish wink for the "AngloMania" theme that pretty much stole the night. And in 2012, Marc Jacobs wore a sheer Comme des Garçons lace dress over a pair of boxer shorts.
His reason? "I just didn't wanna wear a tuxedo and be boring."
In the 2010s, after a surge of experimentation at men's fashion shows, male stars at the Met began to adopt a more freewheeling spirit. As Jacobs said, "boring" was no longer acceptable.
The bizarre, frankly, has been the most fun. Jaden Smith arrived in 2017 holding a fistful of his own freshly chopped dreadlocks, because of course he did. The on-theme winners have been just as memorable: Chadwick Boseman's white-and-gold Versace cape for "Heavenly Bodies" in 2018 and Jared Leto in 2019, carrying a hyper-realistic replica of his own head, designed by Gucci's Alessandro Michele, like it was a clutch.
The 2026 gala lands on Monday, May 4, opening the Costume Institute's "Costume Art" exhibition. The theme — "Fashion Is Art" — basically asks guests to treat themselves like museum pieces. Co-chairs Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Anna Wintour are leading the charge. And if recent years are anything to go by, the men aren't going to spend the evening blending into the background.
Ahead of the night, here's a look back at some of the best men's Met Gala looks ever.
A silver metallic suit was paired audaciously with sneakers (a wild call decades before sneakers-with-tailoring became a normalized red-carpet move).
The Vogue editor was the gala's most consistent menswear icon for decades. In 2004, he showed up in one of his signature floor-length cape coats, a fitting reference to that year's "Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century" theme.
For "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination," Boseman wore a custom white-and-gold Versace look — embroidered with crosses and finished it with a bejewelled cross of his own.
In 2019, Styles wore a sheer black blouse, sky-high black trousers, and a single pearl earring for the "Camp" theme.
Carried in by six shirtless attendants in a gold-encrusted catsuit by The Blonds and a 24-karat headpiece, he then unfurled a pair of giant golden wings. Vogue called it the most fabulous entrance in Met Gala history.
Leto showed up to the "Camp" gala in a custom red Gucci gown, cradling a hyper-realistic replica of his own head. The image remains one of the most-memed Met moments of all time.
A trompe-l'oeil mask of seven painted eyes across the face, a hand-held beaded face-mask accessory, and a black sequined gown. Ezra Miller definitely knew how to make an entrance that day.
For "In America: A Lexicon of Fashion," Ocean wore a simple Prada outfit, and then carried a lime-green animatronic infant on the carpet. Subtle.
Rocky showed up wrapped in a vintage patchwork quilt-as-cape (designed by ERL using a blanket sourced from a California thrift store), and turned this into one of the gala's most-talked-about looks of the decade.
The rapper made his Met Gala debut by stripping out of a regal gold Atelier Versace cape into a full set of gold body armour and then finally a sequined gold bodysuit.
Co-chairing the "In America" gala, Chalamet wore a satin white Haider Ackermann tracksuit-tuxedo with white Converse Chuck Taylors.
A sheer black lace Comme des Garçons frock worn over white boxer shorts, paired with bedazzled Mary Janes. A boundary-pushing move on a red carpet that, in 2012, was almost entirely tuxedos for men.
For the Karl Lagerfeld tribute gala, Bad Bunny wore a sculptural white Jacquemus suit topped with a floor-length cape made from thousands of white embroidered flowers.
Pascal wore a scarlet Valentino trench by Pierpaolo Piccioli, white tee, and tiny red shorts that exposed enough leg to spiral the internet into a frenzy.
For the Lagerfeld tribute, Redmayne wore a sharp black McQueen suit by Sarah Burton, embellished with draped chain embroidery resembling tumbling camellia flowers and finished with a single pearl brooch.
The Met co-chair arrived in a regal blue Valentino cape reminiscent of a choir robe, paying tribute to André Leon Talley, before removing it to reveal a custom pearl-edged Valentino zoot suit beneath.
As co-chair and Louis Vuitton's menswear creative director, Pharrell wore a double-breasted jacket of his own design, with pinstripes constructed entirely from over 15,000 pearls.
The king of our hearts made his Met Gala debut — and became the first Indian male actor on the carpet — in a floor-length black Sabyasachi coat in Tasmanian wool, finished with a pleated kamarbandh, an oversized rhinestone "K" pendant, and an 18-karat-gold Bengal tiger-head cane studded with tourmalines, sapphires, and diamonds.
As co-chair, Lewis wore a cream-toned monochrome tuxedo with a matching beret by Grace Wales Bonner, accessorized with gold rings, a gemstone brooch, and a precise bow tie.
Strapped a full grand piano to his back, in a custom Burberry-and-Benji-Bixby look, to promote his just-released album 7 Piano Sketches.
Once a rigid black-tie affair for men, the Met Gala has become a laboratory for radical menswear. The article highlights iconic outfits—from Chadwick Boseman’s ornate Versace, Harry Styles’ sheer Gucci, and A$AP Rocky’s quilted cape to Pharrell’s pearl-striped Louis Vuitton—illustrating how creativity, camp, and cultural references reshaped the carpet.