The Met Gala, also known as the biggest night in fashion, has officially passed for 2026. And as social media users continue to debate who should be crowned best dressed, this year’s theme of “Costume Art” and dress code “Fashion is Art” had many celebrities and their teams digging deep into artistic archives for inspiration. And in that search emerged the beautiful catalogs of Black artists like Laura Wheeler Waring, Amy Sherald, and Barkley L. Hendricks, whose creativity climbed up the Met Gala steps, in more ways than one.
Angela Bassett inspired by Laura Wheeler Waring
Bassett felt pretty in pink as she walked into the Met Gala wearing a custom Prabal Gurung gown.
“This was based on a painting called ‘Girl in the pink dress’ that was painted during the Harlem Renaissance, 1927, by a black woman named Laura Wheelie Waring,” Bassett told Vogue.
Warring’s painting, which is actually featured in the Met’s collection, is a portrait of an unidentified young Black girl. Like the painting, Bassett’s look included floral details on the shoulder with additional vines to reflect the changes that come with maturing.
“This is sort of a soft nod to the aging body, because it was a young girl in a pink dress,” she added.
Amy Sherald inspired by Amy Sherald
Last night, artist Amy Sherald stepped onto the Met Gala steps dressed in a recreation of her own creativity. Inspired by her 2013 painting “Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance),” Sherald tapped designer Thom Browne to help interpret her vision, exemplifying the relationship between fashion and art.
“I feel like I’ve always resisted a hierarchy between the two. I think fashion is already art and I think art operates on the body,” she told Vanity Fair. “I think it’s two temporalities meeting. And the idea that fashion is art, it isn’t new. I think it’s often denied. But I think what’s happening, it’s like a correction and the museum is acknowledging what designers and artists have always understood: that the body is a site of composition just like canvas or sculpture.”
Law Roach inspired by Naïla Opiangah
Hollywood image architect Law Roach teamed up with Ami Paris and Gabonese artist Naïla Opiangah to spotlight the intersection of fashion and art for his 2026 Met Gala look. Roach’s tailored white suit was adorned with Opiangah’s artistry, which mixes abstraction and figuration that spotlights Black women, their bodies, and their beauty, without sexualizing or otherwise codifying them.
“I flew from Ghana to Paris, and she created her art on the fabric that would become the jacket of my suit at the Ailier of Ami,” Roach explained in a video showing the process behind the look.
Jon Batiste inspired by Barkley L. Hendricks.
Jon Batiste’s all-white ensemble on the Met steps was inspired by the 1976 painting “Steve” by Barkley L. Hendricks. Paying homage to art and dandyism, Batiste worked with designer Eli Russell Linnetz, stylist Corey Stokes, and the Barkley L. Hendricks Estate to bring the painter’s visual language to life.
“Barkley Hendricks uses the medium of visual arts to highlight the everyday, casual majesty of black people. It’s aligned with what I’m doing in the medium of classical music with Black Mozart. Solo piano is a musical form of portraiture,” Batiste shared in a statement, per Hypebeast. “It is also very aligned with Eli’s approach to reimagining the male silhouette. Grateful to ERL, Corey Stokes and Barkley Hendricks estate for helping to tell this story via three different mediums of art: Fashion, visual arts and music.”
Venus Williams inspired by Robert Pruitt
This year’s Met Gala co-chair Venus Williams stepped onto the carpet in a dazzling Swarovski crystal mesh gown. However, beyond helping lead the evening, Williams’ biggest flex is that the art she’s referencing is of herself. Inspired by Robert Pruitt’s “Venus Williams, Double Portrait” at the National Portrait Gallery, the tennis star mirrors various elements from the painting. Just as the 2022 painting captures Williams’ “super, extra-human possibility” through a mirror’s image of her younger and older self, the muse’s Met Gala look featured intricate details that honor her legacy.
“This is actually the Venus rose water dish folded,” she told Vogue, referring to the iconic trophy awarded to the Ladies’ Singles champion at the Wimbledon Championships. “There’s a lot of symbolism here. My mom is here, my dad is here. There’s symbolism from my West African culture. There are the Watts Towers in here to represent Southern California.”
