Amy Sherald Dresses as Her Own Painting for Art-Themed Met Gala
21May 6, 2026
WhenAmy Sheraldhit the red carpet at theCostume Institute’s Met Gala on May 4, she appeared to have stepped directly out of her iconic 2013 paintingMiss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance).Wearing a red hat and a black-and-white dress created by designer Thom Browne, Sherald channeled the work’s youthful subject, who stares coolly out at the viewer over the brim of a large, carefully held teacup. Though a few differences were apparent—the artist held a small red dog-shaped purse rather than a teacup, and her past-the-elbow white gloves were considerably longer than the abbreviated pair worn by her sitter—Sherald notably radiated the same calm poise affected by Miss Everything.
The outfit was assembled in response to the theme of the event, held annually in New York to benefit theMetropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. With its stated dress code of “Fashion Is Art,” this year’s gala responded to the institute’s spring exhibition “Costume Art.” The show, which juxtaposes works from the Met’s collection with designer clothes from across the decades, opens May 10 and will inaugurate the museum’s new, nearly 12,000-square-foot galleries adjacent to the Great Hall. Sherald, along with artists Tschabalala Self and Anna Weyant, served on the Gala’s committee.
Browne told Vanity Fair that the artist reached out to him personally about her costume. “It was a little later than I think we both would’ve wanted, but I would jump through hoops to do it for Amy, because I just love what she does and I love everything that she represents,” he said.. “And it’s so humbling that when she says, if I was a painter, I would paint like her. There’s very, very, very few people that could possibly paint like Amy Sherald.”
Hosted by billionaire Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sánchez Bezos, this year’s Gala raised a record $42 million, as well as the hackles of those troubled by the increasing wealth gap in the US, which is the highest it’s been in three decades. The night before the event, activist group Everyone Hates Elon projected video of a seventy-two-year-old Amazon worker, speaking about the low wages she and her colleagues received, onto the side of the Bezos’s luxury apartment building on Madison Avenue. On May 5, as Gala attendees filtered onto the red carpet, local advocacy group Rise and Resist mounted a protest several blocks away. New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, who last month co-introduced a pied-à-terre tax meant to affect the ultrawealthy and close the city’s budget gap, skipped the event, instead publicly lauding unsung fashion industry workers on his X account.