It takes a certain calibre of celebrity to literally shut down the Metropolitan Museum of Art steps. But at her fifth Met Gala, Cardi B has catapulted into a league of her own by wearing the most show-stopping, voluminous gowns of the evening. A look that befittingly also closed the red carpet and served as the final arrival at the soirée. (Save for Zendaya’s second look of the evening—a vintage Givenchy haute couture gown from 1996 and an Alexander McQueen floral headpiece from 2007).
Rightfully joining Rihanna and Blake Lively in the exclusive legion of A-listers whose dresses have halted the evening, Cardi B meticulously adhered to ‘The Garden Of Time’ dress code by sartorially referencing the contents of the 1962 short story of the same name by J. G. Ballard. Designed by Chinese label Windowsen, founder Sensen Lii revealed that the piece was a homage to the “fertile, black soil used for planting crops and flowers”.
The billowing dress was so ludicrously oversized it spanned almost an entire flight of the Met’s famed staircase and required nine choreographed bodyguards to carefully place the train.
If we’re talking numbers, the piece also used 3,000 metres of organza and consists of an inner and an outer layer, as per Lii. Her entrance to the event was carefully shielded to savour the theatrical reveal, with umbrellas covering her gown as she left the parkside Mark Hotel.
The tiered gown and sculptural bodice weren’t the only noteworthy things about her gown, however. Yes, it might be hard to compete with a gown so big it swallowed the Met Gala steps, but Cardi’s emerald and diamond jewels have done just that. The rapper continued the botanical hue through her beauty look, wearing a sharp viridescent wing, matching green-eye contact lens and three-dimensional acrylic nails.
Cardi’s penchant for statement-making fashion at the Met Gala harks back to her custom Thom Browne gown at the 2019 iteration of the event. The piece literally brought the red carpet to the exclusive ball—because if you can’t beat them, you might as well dress like them, right? No. After years of proving her penchant for evocative sartorial moments, Cardi B has rightfully earned her place in the red carpet Hall of Fame. All it took was one step at a time—literally!
