The Most Over-The-Top, Weirdest Looks At Met Gala 2026 Are Art References

The Met Gala red carpet this year featured some of the more.... avant garde outfits compared to previous years. This wasn’t accidental, though. With a theme rooted in art, iconography, and the afterlives of images, designers and attendees leaned heavily into direct visual references, translating canvases, sculptures, and even poetic descriptions into couture.

Below, we look at some of our favourite callbacks to art at this year's met gala.

In a tribute to the greatest Indian painter of all time, Bollywood director Karan Johar wore a custom Manish Malhotra suit with a gargantuan overcoat, all of which carried references to the many paintings of Raja Ravi Verma.

Heidi Klum brought her panchant for the most bizarre Halloween looks to the Met Gala this year, as she stepped out cosplaying a veiled statue in reference to this famous sculpture of a veiled Mother Mary.

Mona Patel has consistently been making headlines for her Met Gala outfits, starting right from her first appearance in that Iris Van Herpen number. For her ensemble this year, the health tech founder wore a dress inspired by da Vinci’s sketch of the Vitruvian Man. What better way to tribute to her field while sticking to the theme?

The Hobbit actor Luke Evans stepped into the red carpet in head-to-toe leather, complete with Ray-ban sunglasses. The look was an ode to the collection of homoerotic paintings by Touki Valio Laaksonen, who went by the pseudonym Tom of Finland.

The Gossip Girl actress ascended the stairs in archival Atelier Versace from 2006. The pastel colours and volume of her skirt is inspired by the flowy aristocratic silhouettes you'd see in Venetian Roccoco paintings and descriptions of leisurely aristocrats.

Jordan Roth’s 3D printed sculptured outfit by Robert Wun is a reference to the painting of Pygmalion and Galatea, which captures the moment when Venus turned the sculpture of Galatea into a real women in keeping with it's creator, Pygmalion’s wish for a wife as beautiful as the statue.

Tweaking the theme just a little, Anne Hathaway’s custom Michael Kors gown is inspired by John Yeats’ 1819 poem “Ode to a Grecian Urn”, which in turn describes the paintings done on Greek terracotta jugs.

With its humongous veil carried by seven ladies in waiting, Madonna’s gothic look of the night, a custom Saint Laurent ensemble, takes inspiration from the figure in the background on Leonora Carrington’s surrealist painting, The Temptation of St. Anthony. Not only that, she also dressed her extras in accordance with the painting.

Anok Yai wore a rather plain hooded black gown to the met, but the art was in her make-up. The model stepped into the carpet with her fact played in gold, and prosthetic years running down her face, a nod to popular Christian depictions of the seven sorrows of Mother Mary.

The most infamous portrait of a lady as a reference for who is soon to be the most infamous fashion icon of our times—Daniel Roseberry was definitely going for a metaphor here. But if anything, Sanchez proudly wears her dress with her strapline down, a privilege that the original model of the painting, socialite Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, didn't have at the time. In case you didn't know, the painting was later altered to have her sleeve resting on the shoulder as it was deemed too scandalous at the time.

Now this is an art reference done tastefully. Gracie Adams walked the Red Carpet in a very bejeweled Chanel dress, with the jewellery on her shoulders and straps referring to the many colours set against the yellow backdrop of Klimt’s most famous painting. But that's not the only Klimt you'll get...

The Euphoria star’s ingenue look for the night is a couture reimagination of another one of Klimt's most famous portraits (and only one of a child), the independent and assertive nine year old Mäda Primavesi, as described by the Metropolitan Museum.