Met Gala hits and misses from the last decade, from Rihanna to Blake Lively

How the rich and famous got the theme right and wrong on one of fashion's biggest nights

Rihanna's Gui Pei look for the 2015 China: Through the Looking Glass Met Gala was hand-stitched. Reuters

The Met Gala. These three words are enough to create a frenzy of anticipation for an event that happens every year on the first Monday of May and has become one of fashion's biggest, most over-the-top spectacles.

Each year, the evening has a theme echoing the accompanying exhibition that the event serves as the opener for. And each year, stars arrive on the red carpet in looks that have taken weeks to come together and showcase the wearer's fashion savvy and understanding of themes that are deliberately oblique.

However, for every look that draws applause, there is another that sparks an awkward silence for being wildly off topic. Here, we take a look at who is on each list.

Best Met Gala looks

Heading this list is Rihanna, one of the undisputed stars of Met Gala red carpet dressing. Be it in 2018, dressed as the pope in custom Maison Margiela for Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, or in a sublime marigold gown by Gui Pei for 2015's China: Through the Looking Glass event, or as one of the few who understood the REI Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between theme of 2017, the singer is able to embrace any theme and make it her own. With her partner A$AP Rocky as co-chair for 2025, there is great excitement about what Rihanna will be wearing.

Zendaya is another fixture on this list, and of the many looks she has rocked on the red carpet, the one that changed everything was in 2018, when she arrived dressed as Joan of Arc. Clad in Versace chain mail for the Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination Met Gala, this was the moment that established Zendaya as a fashion force to be reckoned with.

In 2022 Versace scored another goal, dressing Blake Lively in a patterned gown that flipped inside out, to reveal something entirely different underneath. With the theme of In America: An Anthology of Fashion, Lively was transformed into the ver de gris of the Statue of Liberty.

That same year, Spanish singer Rosalia nailed the theme in Givenchy. Seemingly spun from sheer lace and diaphanous silk, the bias cut gown spilt off her shoulders, and made her look like one of the heiresses from a portrait by American artist John Singer Sargent.

Also in Givenchy – but haute couture this time – was Kendall Jenner in 2021 in a look that was an update of something worn by Audrey Hepburn in the 1964 film My Fair Lady. Givenchy famously dressed Hepburn for years. For the Met Gala however, the now sheer nude dress and gloves were scattered with crystals for an effect that was elegant, fragile and utterly beautiful.

Always a fan of a big gown, Ariana Grande stepped out in Vera Wang, in 2018. A closer look at the strapless gown revealed it was covered in images from the Sistine Chapel, which was a clever interpretation of the Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination theme.

Claire Danes also embraced a full gown in 2016. For the Manus × Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology theme, she donned a gown by Zac Posen that was made with fibre optics and organza meaning that, like something from a fairy tale, it glowed in the dark.

Worst Met Gala looks

For 2024's Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, the model Amelia Gray Hamlin arrived in a mustard puffball dress that contained a plastic terrarium filled with purple roses and foliage. Doja Cat arrived at 2023's Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty with facial prosthetics that made her look like his cat, Choupette, complete with the ears on her hooded, crystal-studded Oscar de la Renta gown.

Jared Leto also dressed as a giant cat that year, and then, as something of a repeat offender, turned up to the 2019 event, Camp: Notes on Fashion, in a red satin dress slung with crystals and a model of his own head.

In 2021, the German singer-songwriter Kim Petras had a "what was she thinking?" moment when she chose a Collina Strada look, resplendent with a horse head on the bodice for In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.

In 2019, meanwhile, US YouTuber Liza Koshy wore a bizarrely shaped pink dress by Balmain, covered in huge stitching for the Camp: Notes on Fashion evening. While clearly not Balmain's best moment, Koshy treated it with good humour, calling it her “pink poptart dream boat” and taking to social media to declare to her followers: “If you recreate this look using whatever you have at home, I will repost you.”

In 2019, actor Michael Urie wore a half tuxedo/half dress by Christian Siriano, that was – frankly - hideous.

Theatre actress J Harrison Ghee turned up at the 2024 Sleeping Beauty: Reawakening Fashion Met Gala dressed as a giant pink and green insect, with gold antenna, while Kylie Jenner went the lazy route and wore a bridal gown, T-shirt and backward baseball cap for In America: An Anthology of Fashion in 2022.

Katy Perry, meanwhile, is a regular on worst Met Gala looks lists. Her willingness to not take herself serious is commendable, and she clearly has a good sense of humour, but her choices have been questionable to put it mildly. She has, in no particular order, dressed as a hamburger, a chandelier and an angel with five-foot wide gold, feathered wings.