Madonna Wears Valentino-Inspired Saint Laurent at the Met Gala
Madonna wore Saint Laurent at the 2026 Met Gala, with valentino setting the tone for a red carpet built around art references. Her look drew on Leonora Carrington’s The Temptation Of St. Anthony. Fragment II, one of several outfits tied directly to named works of art under the dress code “Fashion Is Art.”
Leonora Carrington and Saint Laurent
Madonna’s Saint Laurent look was the clearest bridge between the night’s fashion and art-history frame. The Carrington reference gave her outfit a specific source instead of a loose mood board, which is exactly what made this carpet read less like costume and more like curation.
Kendall Jenner also used a named artwork as a point of reference, wearing Gap by Zac Posen inspired by the Winged Victory of Samothrace statue. Yu Chi Lyra Kuo followed the same statue cue in Jean Paul Gaultier, turning one classical source into two distinct fashion interpretations on the same carpet.
Gustav Klimt on the Carpet
Hunter Schafer wore a custom Prada look inspired by Gustav Klimt’s Mäda Primavesi, while Gracie Abrams chose Chanel shaped by Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Block-Bauer I. Those two looks pushed the Met Gala’s art brief beyond sculpture and into portraiture, with each designer using a different Klimt work to anchor the styling.
Rachel Zegler’s dress referenced Paul Delaroche’s The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, and Heidi Klum wore a custom Mike Marino look inspired by Giovanni Strazza’s The Veiled Virgin. The range matters because it shows the event did not settle for one art period or medium; it moved from 19th-century history painting to marble sculpture in the same evening.
From Sargent to Seurat
Lauren Sánchez Bezos wore Schiaparelli inspired by John Singer Sargent’s Madame X, one of the night’s most recognizable portrait references. Sam Smith appeared in Christian Cowan inspired by Evelyn Brent, a different kind of source than the museum pieces that dominated the rest of the carpet.
Ben Platt wore custom Tanner Fletcher inspired by Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, closing the set with pointillism rather than portraiture or sculpture. The practical takeaway for fashion watchers is simple: the Met Gala’s 2026 dress code did more than invite art references, it produced a visible roster of named works that can send new audiences back to the originals.
