Cardi B “didn’t want to be offensive” when she referred to the designer of her 2024 Met Gala dress as “Asian and everything” on the red carpet.
The rapper, 31, is under fire for not properly identifying Sensen Lii of Windowsen as the creator of her billowing black gown that nearly covered the entire carpet and required seven assistants to handle the cascading train. Following her comments, which were made to Vogue at Fashion’s Biggest Night on Monday, May 6, Cardi was called out online for being racially insensitive.
“For the record and recognition, and no thanks to Cardi B, the designer of her gown is Sensen Lii who is Chinese. The gown took two months to make. I personally think it’s boring and not even on theme but she chose it and should have at least remembered his name and not just that he’s ‘Asian,’” Vogue’s former managing director Gilbert Cheah wrote via Instagram, per Billboard.
After more critiques came in, Cardi issued a statement of her own in an attempt to clear the air.
“First and first, when I was on the red carpet, I was very scared,” Cardi said in a since-expired Instagram post, per TMZ. “The dress was supposed to be on a little podium, and I’ve been practicing how to pose on the podium. But on the carpet, I wasn’t allowed to use the podium. So, I had a lot of things on my mind, and I was being rushed to the front of the line.”
Cardi shared that she “forgot [how] to pronounce the designer’s name because his name is a little bit complicated.”
“I was like, ‘Damn. How do I pronounce his name?’ My mind was just racing. [I] didn’t want to be offensive. [I said] ‘Asian designer’ because I knew the designer was Asian, but I wasn’t sure what nationality the designer was,” Cardi added.
In a follow-up post shared via X on Wednesday, May 8, Cardi praised Lii and Windowsen. “I have to give another thank you to Windowsen by Sensen Lii!!! I chose you because of your amazing talent and you came through really making this Met Gala a night to remember,” she wrote.
After the ball, Lii took to Instagram to gush over his work on Cardi’s look.
“The Met Gala theme this year is ‘The Garden of Time.’ I associated the fertile, Vast Black Soil with the theme — All kinds of beautiful flowers grow on Vast Black Soil, rich earth used for planting Crops and flowers. A single black rose grows in this Vast Black Soil. The whole dress uses nearly 3,000 meters of organza. It symbolizes the vastness of the land,” he wrote alongside a video of Cardi in the ensemble.
