“Surreal, feminist, Madonna”
This year’s edition of the ball that happens on the first Monday of May as a fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute faced strong criticism for the decision to name Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and one of the world’s wealthiest men, and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, as honorary chairs.
Opposition to the Bezoses started almost immediately after they were announced as financial sponsors in February, the New York Times reports, amid a surging anti-rich sentiment nationwide and in the City, and in the weeks leading up to the event a campaign has erupted on the streets, in subways and online, where social media users have described the event as the “Amazon Prime Gala” or “Bezos Ball.” Guerrilla activist group Everyone Hates Elon has been calling for a boycott of the event, with a drumbeat of eye-catching campaigns around the city, including plastering posters on subway cars and bus stops. On Friday, in a nod to complaints by Amazon workers of having to skip bathroom breaks and urinate in bottles instead, the group placed close to 300 bottles of fake urine inside the Met.
On the day of the event Labor is Art, a group bringing together Amazon workers, their unions and supporters, staged a show on Little West 12th Street to emphasize that labor workers have the power to tell their own stories, and it is their labor that makes Amazon – and not the man who owns 8% of it, The Guardian reports.
The event went on as planned, but there were important voices – or silences – to be noted. “The Met Gala is now giving Bezos exactly the kind of reputation laundering and cultural rocket fuel he needs to keep destroying America,” said actress Cynthia Nixon, who ran for New York governor in 2018. “My hat is off to the mayor for not attending.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who made clear last month that he won’t be attending the ball, posted an article on X on explaining how “while the world’s eyes are on fashion’s biggest night, we’re turning ours to the garment, retail, and warehouse workers who keep the industry running.”
“From true love found on the picket line to a free tailoring school out of a Brooklyn basement, meet the New Yorkers who make it all possible,” he wrote.
“The fashion industry is made possible by the thousands of workers behind the scenes – seamstresses, tailors, retail workers, delivery drivers – whose immense talent and dedication deserves to be celebrated,” he also told i-D.
The protests unfortunately did not make it to the red carpet and we haven’t heard any of the celebrities attending aknowledging or addressing them – which is something to think about and make you realize that sometimes raining on someone’s parade is the only way to avoid being ignored. Madonna was no exception – and certainly not the only A-lister who decided not to miss the night – and this makes it harder to report about how she actually stole the show last night as if we didn’t know that Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Madonna took her assignment to the letter – the ball dress code – Fashion Is Art – was themed around this year’s Costume Art exhibition – with an ensamble that, as you all know by know, reproduced closely Leonora Carrington’s surrealist 1945 painting The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Fragment II.
She was wearing a black custom Saint Laurent designed by Anthony Vaccarello, who walked with her the stairs to the Met door, a violet cloack , and seven damsels holding her trail. This was not the first time Madonna referenced the art of Carrington, which was among the inspirations of her 1995 video for Bedtime Story.
While the vessel Madonna was wearing as a headpiece was a direct reference to the painting, too, it is also a tribute on its own. The pirate-ship-shaped hat is a vintage 1994 creation by Irish milliner Philip Treacy, who created legendary pieces for the Queen of Pop over the years, including her iconic Givenchy hat for the 2012 Super Bowl Half Time Show. “The Ship” Hat has become something of a legend over the years, and when his 2015 book was released, the designer explained how he’s received many offers for it over the years, Evoke reports. When Treacy shared a video of Madonna in his hat at the ball we eventually learnt that “his” hat was owned by the late magazine editor, Isabella Blow, who died in 2007.
Madonna’s hairdo was equally intriguing, with a 50-inch wig which took 60 hours to make, created by another longtime collaborator of hers, hair couturier Merria Dearman.
As ELLE explains, such an elaborate look would normally take weeks to perfect, but as this is the Met Gala, the magic happens in the final hours, with Dearman flying to London late last week to fit the style on Madonna, and then back to New York for last night’s ball. In the City, Dearman continued to collaborate with Madonna’s hair stylist Eugene Souleiman on the final product.
“Everything’s in his hands” Dearman tells ELLE about Souleiman. “He just has a flow that he works in, and you just watch. And it’s imperfect, that’s the whole beauty of it. [Madonna’s] hair has a story in it through this texture that they’ve built. This look really represents her as a woman, saying, ‘I’m a feminist. I will keep making art. I’m not going to do what society normally tells me to do and sit down.’”
When asked by ELLE to distill the entire moment into a few words, Dearman was succinct. “Surreal, feminist, Madonna.”
“The look was rooted in an obscure feminist artist. It was surreal, textural, and emotionally driven rather than literal. From the beginning, it was never about perfection. It was about feeling,” Dearman also said in a statement.
“And I would say it’s fucking Madonna”, she told Vanity Fair. “There’s nothing else to say other than it’s completely her world.” The journey started with Madonna spotting a similar wig by Dearman while filming her cameo in season two of The Studio in Venice and immediately falling for it, VF also reports. She did not get the permission to take the piece from the set, but when the production’s hair department head advised her to get in touch with the wig’s maker, Merria Dearman, Madonna was thrilled, as she made the wigs for her Madame X and Celebration tours.
Madonna was also wearing a Falcon crest by Castro NYC, a Medusa ring of 18-karat yellow gold and silver set with diamonds and rubies and a mammoth bone cameo depicting Perseus on the back and a skull ring of 18-karat yellow gold, silver, and enamel set with rock crystal by Attilio Codognato.
MADONNA at the Met Gala 2026
Wearing Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello
Hat by Philip Treacy
Custom wig by Merria Dearman styled by Eugene Souleiman
Styling Rita Melssen
Makeup Marcelo Gutierrez using KIKO Milano
assisted by Bri Stine and Claire Brooke
Nails Naomi Yasuda
