Behind the Scenes of Meta’s Met Gala 2026 Class Photo—With Kylie Jenner, Alex Consani, Chase Infiniti, and More

Reported by Vogue.

The Met Gala's red carpet gets the glory, but the real theater happens five blocks south at The Mark Hotel, where Meta assembles its annual class photo before guests make their way to the museum. This year's portrait session transformed one of the hotel's suites into something lifted from a Dutch Masters canvas — white calla lilies, cream linens, a delicate candle snuffer — a studied, opulent backdrop for a guest list that ran from Grand Slam champions to global pop phenomena, according to Vogue.

The athleticwear-to-couture pipeline was fully operational. Naomi Osaka arrived in a custom Robert Wun two-piece, her red sculptural plumes announcing her presence before she did. Figure skater Alysa Liu — fresh off her Winter Olympics moment — showed up in a strapless crimson Louis Vuitton gown and Uggs, stylist trailing with heels in hand. Maluma stepped in wearing a Tom Ford sequined tuxedo and Bvlgari jewels, cheerfully performed his assigned "napkin folding" duties for the camera, and flashed a million-dollar smile before heading out. Eva Chen, Instagram's head of fashion partnerships, wore a custom Klein Blue plissé silk Proenza Schouler gown — hand-grommeted, fringed, asymmetrically trained — courtesy of newly appointed creative director Rachel Scott. Adam Mosseri opted for a floral Kartik Research pantsuit; his wife Monica matched his energy in pale blue corsetry.

Crystals, Sequins, and a Historic First

Then came the numbers that make your jaw drop. Lisa arrived in a custom Robert Wun piece embedded with 40,000 Swarovski crystals requiring 3,800 hours of construction — Robert Wun himself on hand to share the stats. Close behind her, Chase Infiniti walked in wearing a Thom Browne trompe l'oeil gown referencing the Venus de Milo, assembled from over 1.5 million sequins across 600 different colors, with fringe engineered to read as brushstrokes in motion. Hudson Williams rounded out the sequin moment in a custom Balenciaga by Pierpaolo Piccioli — a powdery blue suit referencing a 1947 house archive piece, with a train nodding to traditional matador silhouettes.

The session closed with perhaps its most charged entrance: Alex Consani and Sarah Paulson, soon to reunite on American Horror Story Season 13, arrived together. Paulson wore grey tulle by Matières Fécales; Consani appeared in a Gucci nude corset gown trailing a sweeping dark-feathered train that required four people to move through the room. This year, Consani returned not just as a guest but as a member of the Met's host committee. "It's a really special moment for me being the first trans woman to co-chair the Met," she said on set — a statement that cut cleanly through the spectacle.

Fashion weeks come and go, but the Met remains the one night a year when the industry actually has to justify the scale of its ambitions — and 2026 made a convincing case.

Read the original at Vogue.