A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Beginning of May in New York marks fashion's biggest night, the Met Gala. This year's theme, fashion is art. Katey Rich was watching the red carpet. She's the awards editor for The Ankler, a newsletter that covers Hollywood. So, Katey, let's start with some of your favorite looks because some were amazing, some were odd (laughter).
KATEY RICH: (Laughter) I think the odd ones sometimes are the point of it, right?
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, yeah.
RICH: I mean, you see something like Chase Infiniti, who was the big breakout star of "One Battle After Another" last year. And her dress looks like swirls of color. It looks like it's a painting painted onto her body. And she looked incredible. It's something you would never see anywhere else. I mean, it's a little more traditional than, like, Rachel Sennott. She had a dress that had, like, a big circle on her train popping out of her hip. She was chewing gum as an accessory to go with it.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
RICH: So, you know, for something like that, I think the oddness is really part of the magic.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. And Sennott had these hot pink tights, too, that really popped.
RICH: (Laughter) Exactly.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. What about - what did you think of Bad Bunny? Bad Bunny - I mean, describe Bad Bunny's look.
RICH: I mean, Bad Bunny was dressed as himself as an old man. I mean, it was really an incredible effect. I haven't seen anything talking to the people who did his makeup, if there were prosthetics or just really skilled painting involved. You know, the theme of the night really had a lot of people thinking about how the body is incorporated in fashion.
So, you know, if transforming your face can be counted as part of that, you know, Heidi Klum basically was totally unrecognizable, looking like a literal marble statue. So she may have even beaten him to the punch on the face transformation. But, you know, Bad Bunny is maybe the most famous person on the planet right now. So to go to something like this and make yourself almost unrecognizable, maybe that's the biggest flex of all.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. It was Met Gala 2056, not 2026.
RICH: (Laughter).
MARTÍNEZ: I mean, it looked like what he might look like, you know...
RICH: Yeah.
MARTÍNEZ: ...Thirty years from now, when he's 62.
RICH: And he looks great, so he could be proud.
MARTÍNEZ: Yes, yes, he definitely did. So how did this year compare to other Met Galas?
RICH: I mean, sometimes the Met Gala theme is something like camp a few years ago, which everyone really felt like they had to go over the top and interpret. There's some that are really historical. You get people kind of dressing like Ben Franklin. I mean, this one, I think it was just broad enough that people could go in a lot of different directions. You know, you have some people like Patrick Schwarzenegger showing up, like, in a leather jacket that looked fantastic, but not necessarily as thematic as some other ones. I mean, some of the dresses...
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
RICH: ...You see, they had, like, you know, paintings, references to historical paintings on them. Or Ben Platt, the Broadway star, had, like, a George Seurat painting on his jacket. So there were some literal elements of it. But I think people could go broad and then just do some stuff that maybe was just really fun and exciting and a way to dress that they wouldn't normally, which is what I always hope for from the Met Gala.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. And of course, Madonna needed two people, two extra people, to attend to her cape that needed to be stretched out.
RICH: (Laughter)
MARTÍNEZ: So, of course, it's Madonna. You know, what am I going to - of course...
RICH: Well, and you have Rihanna and Beyoncé there as well. So if you're getting pop divas all being on the red carpet, they are - one of - they have to one-up each other in some way, right?
MARTÍNEZ: Right. One more thing. I know Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sanchez, were honorary chairs and sponsors this year. What was the reaction to their involvement?
RICH: I mean, as far as I can tell, they kept all the protesters off the carpet. There was one moment that was reported where someone got close to crashing the barrier. But obviously security at an event like this is going to be so tight. There had been protests leading up to it.
I did notice that Sarah Paulson was wearing a dress that had a dollar bill mask incorporated into it. And she said the theme was The One Percent, so maybe that was her small protest on the red carpet. But, you know, otherwise, it's a night that's about the museum. It's about raising money to support art. And it does seem like the focus really turned toward that after all of that lead-up of the protests.
MARTÍNEZ: That's Katey Rich of The Ankler. Katey, thanks a lot.
RICH: Thank you.
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