Met Gala’s green carpet including co-host Zendaya’s dramatic ‘Garden of Time’ take

Louise Talbot
May 07, 2024, updated May 07, 2024

Best Met Gala looks

Source: The New Daily

Stars of film, music, TV and fashion have celebrated fashion’s biggest night on airbrushed green steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with their interpretation of this year’s theme Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.

Actor and co-host Zendaya, 27, stole the show, paying homage in perfect style to the official dress code of The Garden Of Time, inspired by a story by JG Ballard about a man who turns back time by plucking each flower in his garden until it is barren.

First, she channelled a fairytale villain in an ocean-blue gown sprinkled with grapes, feathers and hummingbirds, with a matching headpiece from Maison Margiela’s John Galliano.

She closed out the fashion spectacular on the stairs with a black gown from Galliano’s Givenchy era from 1996.

“Zendaya always understands the assignment,” wrote Deadline Hollywood, after the actor stunned in her Dune: Part Two press tour with futuristic, sci-fi inspired looks, as well as her “tennis-core” ensembles for the Challengers press tour.

The Met Gala is held on the first Monday in May and celebrates the opening of the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition at the New York museum.

Alongside Vogue editor-in-chief Dame Anna Wintour, Zendaya’s co-hosts were US singer and actor Jennifer Lopez, rapper Bad Bunny, and first-time attendee Chris Hemsworth.

Hot off his Australian promotional campaign for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Hemsworth was first co-chair to arrive – and a first-timer as a guest – wearing a cream three-piece Tom Ford suit with black patent leather shoes.

Other Australians in the mix included Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman and husband Keith Urban, Baz Luhrmann and basketballer Ben Simmons.

When asked what it was like to get the call from Wintour, Hemsworth admitted he had to call his wife, Elsa Pataky, who accompanied him to the star-studded gala, for a heads-up.

“Where I grew up, and where I am from, it wasn’t something that was in the forefront of my mind. But recently I realised it’s a really big deal,” he told Variety on the carpet.

“I feel honoured to be here among great company with a whole bunch of eclectic artists from different industries.

“It’s date night for us … the kids are back home in Australia.”

Did his outfit scream Garden of Time, asked Rolling Stone? “Not really, but he is wearing a [Chopard] watch”.

Meanwhile, it was Lopez’s 14th Met Gala.

She wore a sheer, sparkling gown with a plunging neckline and a pronounced architectural bodice from Schiaparelli Haute Couture.

“Eight hundred hours of work, a true couture creation, it has four butterfly wings … perfect for the sleeping beauty [theme], a butterfly sleeps, wakes up,” Lopez said.

Puerto Rican star Bad Bunny wore a navy barathea jacket with a bouquet made up of the Flor de Maga, Puerto Rico’s national flower, a rose and a flax plant that Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger on in the original fairy tale.

The rapper and singer, real name Benito Ocasio, also wore a reverse stitched hat and sunglasses as part of the custom Maison Margiela fit.

Wintour had on a custom Loewe look with a black cape adorned with tulips, inspired by a cloak designed by Charles Frederick Worth in the 1800s.

Singer Tyla won the award for most creative interpretation as a human hourglass in a sands of time-inspired custom Balmain gown (she had to be lifted up the stairs by minders).

A close second was the “work of art” where moving butterflies “is technology meets fashion at its finest”, thanks to Indian fashion mogul Mona Patel.

The most notable absence was singer Rihanna, who has delivered some of the most memorable Met Gala looks in recent years.

And celebrities who missed the theme and didn’t quite display the decay of time, earthen looks, floral headpieces, anything from the garden?

There were a few, with the question from Gala watchers asking the same thing: “The theme is garden of time. What can be so hard about that?”

Fashion police pointed the finger at reality TV star Kim Kardashian, who wore her boyfriend’s cardigan, messed-up platinum blonde hair and a weirdly unrealistic small waist, while Matt Damon work a dull black-tie dinner suit.

US model Amelia Gray Hamlin wore a weird blow-up dress filled with flowers, singer Lana Del Ray went as a reindeer with sticks on her head under a giant veil (which divided opinion as also being best on theme), and Cara Delevingne and Dua Lipa also got special mentions for bizarre interpretations.