Hunter Schafer’s Sheer Scribble Tutu Is the Work of This Independent Designer

Reported by Harper's Bazaar.

The Met Gala is a marathon, not a sprint — and Hunter Schafer clearly dressed for both legs. After closing out the night at People's Bar with Anthony Vaccarello and Zoë Kravitz, she arrived in a custom piece that made the after-party feel like its own event.

The dress came courtesy of Steve O Smith, a London-based independent designer and Central Saint Martins graduate who has quietly built one of the more compelling practices in contemporary fashion. According to Harper's Bazaar, Smith constructs what can only be described as wearable drawings — he sketches directly onto fabric, cuts the shapes out, and sews them onto garments to create a disorienting push-pull between flat and dimensional. For Schafer, that translated into a sheer tulle tutu mini layered with black "scribble" embellishments that cast a shadow-like effect across the silhouette. Delicate and chaotic at once. The original painting that inspired the piece is sitting right on Smith's Instagram, if you want the full picture.

From the Atelier to the After-Party

Smith's approach has already earned serious institutional validation — he took home LVMH's Karl Lagerfeld Award, and his client list includes Ariana Grande and Raye. He occupies a specific and increasingly coveted lane: art-forward dressing that actually moves, that reads across a room, that photographs like something curated for a gallery wall. Schafer, styled by Dara, anchored the look with a yellow bag and Christian Louboutin pumps, hair still set in her red carpet waves from earlier in the evening.

For the Gala itself, the duo had collaborated with Prada on a custom gown drawn from Gustav Klimt's portrait of Mäda Primavesi — so the through-line here is clear: art history in the evening, art-as-clothing at midnight. Inside the bar, she joined Kendall Jenner, Hailey Bieber, Margot Robbie, A$AP Rocky, and Olivia Rodrigo, which is either the most glamorous Tuesday imaginable or just a regular night when you're dressed by an LVMH prize winner.

When an emerging designer can hold his own against Prada in the same twelve-hour stretch, the conversation about who gets to dress fashion's most visible women is already shifting.

Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.