Emma Chamberlain is no Met Gala rookie. This year was the internet multihyphenate’s sixth time both attending and serving as Vogue’s special correspondent on the red carpet, and she was more locked in than ever.
“I’m taking it really seriously in a way that I feel like I haven’t in the past,” she told Vogue two days before the event. Instead of going to every pre-Met party (and there are many), this time she saved her energy by staying in. “I just want to be as peaceful as possible and rest,” she said. It was all in preparation for a night of interviewing the world’s biggest stars for Vogue’s digital platforms—and doing so wearing what may be her most personal Met Gala look to date.
Photo: Getty Images
For the 2026 Met Gala, Chamberlain wore custom Mugler by Miguel Castro Freitas, whom she and her stylist, Jared Ellner, met at a Vogue cocktail event during Paris Fashion Week on the eve of the creative director’s debut spring-summer 2026 show. The three became fast friends, and after taking in the show, Chamberlain knew Mugler would be the perfect choice for The Met. And when they heard the dress code was Fashion Is Art, everything clicked.
“I’m somebody who really believes that fashion is art,” Chamberlain said. In envisioning her look, she took inspiration from both her family and her lifelong love of art. “My dad is an oil painter and a watercolor painter, and I grew up in a very creative household with art all over my house,” she said. For Chamberlain, paintings—and paint itself—are nostalgic and comforting. She and Ellner wanted her gown to feel like one, incorporating textures, colors, and themes from some of her favorite works.
“There is sort of this watercolor feel, and I love watercolor painting,” she said. “But then also there’s a creepy, sort of ominous undertone to the gown, like the way that it moves. And that is very much my taste in art.”
To begin the custom design process, Chamberlain and Ellner sent art references (including works by Van Gogh and Munch) to Castro Freitas and the Mugler team, then had a three-hour conversation to talk through ideas. Ellner also selected archival Mugler looks as influences, including a butterfly dress from 1997. (When Castro Freitas sent them the initial sketch, Chamberlain and Ellner had virtually no notes.)
The “Butterfly” Mugler dress from 1997
Photo: Getty Images
The result is a stunning gown, designed by Castro Freitas and hand-painted by artist Anna Deller-Yee, that literally turned Chamberlain’s body into a canvas. It’s a feeling she loves. “I really am someone who enjoys fashion the most when I get to be a complete blank canvas,” she said. The dress took Deller-Yee 40 hours to paint, working with 30 base colors, and four days to dry.
To walk the carpet, she opted for Stuart Weitzman platform heels in custom-dyed navy satin. When it came to her glam for the evening, “we had some big, brave ideas of what I’d do,” she said, including dyeing her hair brown. Ultimately, the team went for a subtler effect that let her Mugler dress shine.
Makeup artist Lilly Keys was inspired by the gown, echoing its mauve, purple, and soft yellow iridescent colors around Chamberlain’s eyes. Keys wanted the look to reflect the “slightly otherworldly” tone of the dress by making Chamberlain’s skin a “reflective surface, so when she moves, it catches light,” Keys said, adding that a key tool in creating this effect was the Shark Beauty FacialPro Glow. Keys opted to keep Chamberlain’s lips “velvet and neutral” to keep the focus on her skin and eyes.
Photo: Getty Images
Chamberlain decided to keep her platinum blond hair for the evening. Hairstylist Sami Knight told Vogue that she also wanted to keep all eyes on Chamberlain’s dress. “A gown like this speaks, it has a language of its own, and doesn’t require any hairstyling tricking to elevate it, only to complement and support the vision,” Knight said. “Emma’s signature crop is a little longer recently, and we just wanted to soften it, to make an angelic halo of blonde locks.” One of the key tools Knight used to achieve the soft look—inspired by Mia Farrow, Jean Seberg, and Audrey Hepburn—was the ion Luxe Infrared SmartSense Dryer.
It all combined to create a glam look that felt true to Chamberlain. She felt that the dress “was very much made for me as I am,” she said, adding: “I’m loving me looking like me in this gown.”
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