Dior, Versace, Bob Mackie, Oh My! Sabrina Carpenter Goes Old Hollywood Glam at the 2026 Met Gala
Sabrina Carpenter loves to switch it up at the Met Gala. This year she channeled vintage starlet, making not one but two outfit changes during the evening.
Reported by Vogue.
At this point, Sabrina Carpenter treating the Met Gala as a full cinematic production feels less like a surprise and more like a promise she keeps every single year. For 2026, she arrived on the steps in a custom Dior tulle gown designed by Jonathan Anderson — a deliberate nod to Audrey Hepburn's 1954 film Sabrina, complete with a full-body wrap of rhinestone film strips that, if you look closely enough, contain actual stills of Humphrey Bogart and William Holden. The reference was both deeply personal and achingly precise: this is a woman who knows exactly what she's doing.
The appearance carried extra weight this year. Carpenter headlined Coachella — a goal she'd publicly declared back in 2025 — and joined the Met Gala's host committee alongside Teyana Taylor, Doja Cat, Lisa, and Misty Copeland, among others. She's no longer a guest with a good publicist. She's architecture.
The Art of the Outfit Change
Inside the museum, the real performance began. According to Vogue, Carpenter pulled off not one but two costume changes for a set with Stevie Nicks — a collaboration that sounds almost too good to be real. First, a Versace tribute dress from spring 2018 featuring Andy Warhol silkscreen prints of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, a direct callback to Gianni Versace's original spring 1991 Pop Art collection. Then: a gold fringed Bob Mackie, closely echoing the vintage Mackie she wore during last year's afterparty circuit. The throughline was unmistakably Old Hollywood — glamorous, knowing, and a little dangerous.
What makes Carpenter's Met Gala record genuinely interesting is its refusal to repeat. Her 2022 debut was a glittering Rabanne two-piece — bikini top, high-waist skirt, full maximalist energy. In 2024, she countered with a black Oscar de la Renta mermaid gown dissolving into a cascade of blue. Last year brought a Louis Vuitton pinstripe bodysuit so sharp it mirrored fellow host committee member Lisa's own LV moment. "My look for every year has been totally different," she told Vogue ahead of that appearance — and she hasn't lied yet.
If last year's Carpenter said global pop star on the rise, tonight's said young Hollywood starlet with a long memory — and the wardrobe budget to prove it.
Read the original at Vogue.
