From Princess Diana to Tyla, These 11 Met Gala Moments Helped Define Pop Culture

Donatella Versace in the dress that J.Lo would later popularize: “Rock Style,” 1999

Everyone remembers Jennifer Lopez wearing the green jungle-print chiffon Versace dress with a plunging neckline to the 2000 Grammys. (After all, frantic internet searches for Lopez’s look did give the world what is now Google Images.) Lesser known is that the dress’s Italian designer, Donatella Versace, actually wore a version of that very dress to the Met Gala a year earlier. Although Lopez and her stylist had some reservations about the dress’s having been worn before, the opportunity for a moment prevailed. “I didn’t break the internet. And Ginger Spice, she didn’t either,” Versace told Vogue’s Anna Wintour in 2019. “But J.Lo did it.”

Marc Jacobs and Kate Moss join forces: “The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion,” 2009

When the American fashion designer and British supermodel attended the Met Gala together as co-chairs, “it was like an out-of-body experience,” Kate Moss told Vogue in 2024. Walking the zebra-print carpet of the 2009 Met Gala, Moss wore a gold lamé Marc Jacobs minidress and turban that made her look reminiscent of a golden goddess. “The gold dress with the turban became sort of an iconic outfit for me,” she said. When Moss and Jacobs stole the show, they joined the likes of fellow dynamic Met duos, including designer Alexander McQueen and Sarah Jessica Parker, who wore matching tartan to celebrate British fashion in 2006.

Rihanna’s dramatic yellow train: “China: Through the Looking Glass,” 2015

The word iconic is often overused, but the term applies when it comes within a few feet of Rihanna—16 feet, to be exact. She stopped the 2015 Met Gala in its tracks by wearing a canary yellow gown with an elongated, fur-trimmed train. “I’m so in love with this dress, but the train is insane!” Rihanna told Vanity Fair of her 16-foot stunner from the red carpet. “I can’t really walk in it without any help—but it’s so worth it.” The dramatic gown and corresponding headpiece, which RiRi found online, have become one of the most instantly recognizable looks in Met Gala history. She nearly outdid herself in 2018, donning a John Galliano–designed Maison Margiela look that featured a papal-inspired headpiece to honor the gala’s “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” theme.

Jason Derulo’s fake fall down the Met stairs: circa 2015

No, Jason Derulo never attended the Met Gala, nor did he publicly tumble down the Met stairs while walking the red carpet. But the internet sure loves imagining that he did. It started around 2015, when a 2011 photo of an unidentified man in a white suit falling at the Cannes Film Festival began to circulate, with a person falsely claiming that man was Derulo. The musician cheekily denied being in the photo, but for some reason, the meme has kept gaining momentum—with Derulo continuing to take faux spills at basically any awards show imaginable.

Zendaya’s Cinderella transformation: “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” 2019

Zendaya has attended the Met Gala seven times before the age of 30—but her perhaps most inventive look came courtesy of Tommy Hilfiger, who reimagined the bright young actor as the fairy-tale heroine. The look came complete with a pumpkin-carriage purse, LED lights that accentuated the blue gown, and special effects smoke billowing from the magic wand of her stylist, Law Roach—a fashion fairy godmother in the flesh.

Lady Gaga changing outfits mid-carpet: “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” 2019

When Mother Monster co-chaired that year’s Camp-themed gala, she crammed four entirely different looks into a 15-minute jaunt down the Met red carpet. Gaga arrived in a hot pink Brandon Maxwell gown with a parachute skirt and 25-foot train that followed her for the first bit of the press line. Joined by four assistants with umbrellas and eyes on the train, Gaga and Maxwell walked by The Metropolitan Museum of Art with a wagon full of Champagne labeled Haus of Gaga behind them. Once she reached the bottom of the stairs, Maxwell tugged at a sash at Gaga’s waist, opened some snaps, pulled on a zipper, and suddenly Gaga was wearing a little black dress. That was followed by a more cylindrical dress in the same pink fabric as her original gown. And with one last grasp of fabric, Gaga’s final look was a sequin bikini and fishnets paired with glittery platform boots.

Jared Leto arriving with a replica of his own head: “Camp Notes on Fashion,” 2019

The Camp-themed Met Gala bred a bunch of eye-catching ensembles, but perhaps nothing was more striking than Jared Leto toting around an $11,000 replica of his own severed head. Dressed in Gucci, the Oscar-winning actor wore a silky red high-neck gown outfitted with shoulder pads and a jewel-covered bodychain. Leto’s avant-garde accessory was inspired by the viral moment when designer Alessandro Michele had some models carry realistic versions of their own heads down the runway during Gucci’s fall 2018 ready-to-wear show. Leto’s noggin went on to be a Met after-party attraction, but it eventually seemed to vanish. “I think someone may have stolen it,” Leto later told GQ. “If anyone out there finds it, bring it into your nearest Gucci store in exchange for a pair of dirty sneakers.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Tax the Rich” dress: “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion,” 2021

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani is skipping this year’s Met Gala to focus on “affordability” efforts in his city, but his fellow New York lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attended the Met Gala and took a different approach to addressing wealth inequality. The congresswoman wore a white gown by designer Aurora James that read “Tax the Rich” in red type across the back. Ocasio-Cortez’s fashion statement unsurprisingly ruffled feathers across party lines, namely those of Donald Trump Jr. and Ted Cruz, who on social media pointed out the pricey nature of the Met Gala. “I thought about the criticism I’d get, but honestly I and my body have been so heavily and relentlessly policed from all corners politically since the moment I won my election that it’s kind of become expected and normalized to me…. Ultimately the haters hated and the people who are thoughtful were thoughtful,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a post in her Instagram Stories the day after the Met benefit. “But we all had a conversation about Taxing the Rich in front of the very people who lobby against it, and punctured the 4th wall of excess and spectacle.”