Colman Domingo Hosts 2026 Faena Hotel Party With 20-Day Look
colman domingo turned his Saturday night pre-Met Gala gathering at the Faena Hotel in West Chelsea into a live fashion room, greeting guests himself and pulling them onto the dance floor with an embrace and a twirl. The party drew actors, designers, and fashion figures before the Met Gala, but the sharper draw was the custom look Domingo wore: a feathered jacket and matching halter blouson by Patricio Campillo.
Faena Hotel Saturday night
Guests arrived to a party invitation that told them to “Put That Sh*t On!” and the dress code matched the message. Domingo kept the room moving with a toast to the crowd, while partygoers had their cell phone cameras covered with a gold sticker branded with “Xo Colman,” a small but deliberate way to keep the night inside the room instead of on every feed.
Natasha Lyonne attended, along with Instagram’s Evan Mosseri and Eva Chen, Alessandro Michele, Haider Ackermann, Marc Jacobs and his husband Char Defrancesco, and Emma Thynn Weymouth, who wore a white gown with a train that stretched no less than 10 feet across the room. Meghan Fahy, Leo Woodall, Nina Dobrev, Gabrielle Union, Heidi Klum, and Coco Rocha took turns as DJs, giving the event a rotating soundtrack rather than a single celebrity set.
Patricio Campillo's 20 days
Patricio Campillo said the look took 20 days and required working six days a week to individually sew the rooster feathers. That kind of labor is the point of a night like this: the outfit was not just worn, it was built as part of the event’s message, with Domingo using the room as a runway before the Met Gala even started.
Spinderella and Lina warmed up the crowd before Jacob Lusk sang a cover of “Bennie & The Jets” without any cell phone cameras in sight. Domingo then told the room, “We’re here tonight to celebrate the arts, in all its forms, and all of you here that can change the world through your art.”
Jacob Lusk and the close
He followed that with, “Tonight I want you all to meet a new person, because through this community and connection with one and other, you have the power to change the world.” That is the evening’s real business: not a quiet dinner before a red carpet, but a tightly managed social signal, with the guest list, the music, and the covered phones all pointing to one thing — Domingo knows how to turn a pre-Gala party into a controlled fashion event.
Domingo is next set to release a new science fiction thriller directed by Steven Spielberg, which keeps him in the same high-visibility lane that made this party worth watching in the first place. If the Faena Hotel gathering was the warm-up, the bigger commercial question is how much of this audience follows him from the dance floor to the screen.
