A Met Gala staple. The 2022 Met Gala red carpet wouldn’t have been complete without an appearance from style icon Anna Wintour, the event’s trustee who has honorarily co-chaired the event for decades.
The Vogue editor-in-chief, 72, wowed at the Party of the Year on Monday, May 2, while walking the red carpet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This year’s theme is “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” — specifically with a “Gilded Glamour” dress code — and Wintour opted to sparkle in a feathery frock detailed with multicolored black, orange, blue and purple beads in various zig-zag patterns. The most buzzed-about part of her ensemble, however, was her queenly accessory: the regal tiara she adorned atop her legendary dirty blonde bob.
The fashion guru surprised style-watchers at last year’s Met Gala, opting for a bright, floral Oscar de la Renta gown over her tradition of wearing Chanel to the event.
The 2021 Met Gala was certainly one to go bold — and for Wintour to depart from her usual Chanel — since the 2020 soiree was canceled due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The coronavirus also impacted the date of the 2021 fashion event, which was pushed to September of that year instead of the usual first Monday in May.
Last year’s theme was “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion,” a similar sentiment to this year’s motto (and museum exhibit), which explains the magazine editor’s decision to go with an American designer like de la Renta. She called her brightly patterned, ruffled frock “an homage to my dear friend Oscar de la Renta” in an interview with The New York Times. (The designer passed away in 2018.)
Wintour has been an honorary co-chair at the Met Gala for over two decades, beginning her reign in 1999. This year, she is sitting alongside other big names in the industry: luxury designer Tom Ford and Adam Mosseri, who is the head of Instagram. Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Regina King and Lin-Manuel Miranda are hosting the event
While Ford, 60, is a chairman at this year’s event, he slammed the more modern couture that stars have been wearing to the gala in recent years.
“It’s turned into a costume party,” Ford revealed in an excerpt from Anna: The Biography — an upcoming book about Wintour herself — published by Time on Monday, April 25.
“That used to just be very chic people wearing very beautiful clothes going to an exhibition about the 18th century,” he explained, before seemingly referring to Katy Perry’s much-discussed cheeseburger costume from the 2019 gala. (That year’s theme was “Camp: Notes on Fashion.”)
“You didn’t have to look like the 18th century, you didn’t have to dress like a hamburger, you didn’t have to arrive in a van where you were standing up because you couldn’t sit down because you wore a chandelier,” he added.