Go Greek! The Stars Channeled Classical Sculptures at the 2026 Met Gala
This year’s Met Gala attendees proved that there was plenty of room to get creative with classical art, from Kendall Jenner to Chase Infiniti.
Reported by Vogue.
The 2026 Met Gala's "Costume Art" theme came loaded with options — eight exhibition subsections worth of creative runway to run down. But when the stairs filled up on May 4th, a pattern emerged: ancient Greece and Rome were having a moment. The classical body division, rooted in Hellenistic and Roman sculpture, became the night's unofficial dress code within the dress code, according to Vogue.
The most instinctive read? Marble. Specifically, the illusion of it — fluid, cold, eternal. Laura Harrier leaned into Di Petsa's signature wet-drape technique, her gown clinging like fabric soaked in myth. Lindsey Vonn went architectural in Thom Browne, a beaded trompe l'oeil confection that mimicked the swirling veins of black-and-white stone. Both looks understood the assignment on a molecular level: clothing as fossilized drapery, the body as monument.
Beyond the Marble Finish
The more interesting story, though, was how guests refused to let "classical" mean predictable. Kendall Jenner and designer Zac Posen pulled off something genuinely strange and brilliant — a GapStudio white T-shirt reimagined as the Winged Victory of Samothrace, headless goddess energy fully intact. Meanwhile, Chase Infiniti, also in Thom Browne, gave the Venus de Milo a vivid chromatic overhaul, injecting color into an icon that's been monochrome for two millennia.
And then there was Heidi Klum, who has never once met a theme she wasn't willing to commit to completely. Her prosthetics-laden interpretation of Raffaele Monti's Veiled Vestal — the 19th-century marble sculpture famous for its impossibly sheer stone veil — pushed classical reference into full-body transformation. It was maximalist, slightly unnerving, and entirely on-brand for someone who treats the Met steps like a creative thesis defense.
What the classical body moment at this year's Gala actually proved is that antiquity isn't a limitation — it's a provocation. The oldest references in the Western art canon still have enough tension in them to generate something genuinely new, whether you're working with couture beadwork, a cotton tee, or a full prosthetics rig. Fashion keeps returning to ancient stone not out of nostalgia, but because marble, it turns out, bends.
Read the original at Vogue.
