I live for the Met Gala, and I couldn’t wait to get home from work Monday. Our guest bedroom was where I parked it, with my iPhone glued to my hand and the social media comments rolling in as fast as I could read them. The only two people who text me back about red carpet moments at this level are my daughter and my sister, and Monday night we were all locked in. The 2026 Met Gala theme was Fashion Is Art, tied to the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition Costume Art, and the carpet leaned hard into the assignment with paintings come to life and silhouettes pulled straight from museum walls.

The first one who got me was Anna Wintour. She has been chairing this gala since 1995 and she still finds a way to surprise me. This year she wore Chanel, a turquoise and black embroidered gown layered under a feathered turquoise jacket, with her signature sunglasses still on and the bob still doing exactly what it has been doing for forty years. I watched her step onto her own carpet at seventy-six and I thought, that is who I want to be when I get there. Not loud, just the woman everybody is already watching whether she announces herself or not. That is what refinement looks like, and that is what I am working toward.

When I saw Nicole Kidman, I was immediately obsessed. Custom crimson Chanel, sequins, a feathered hem, and that posture she has always had. Red is hard to wear, and Nicole wore it the way she does everything, with shoulders back and the kind of stillness most of us are still trying to learn. You can’t go wrong in Chanel. I recently watched the Christian Dior documentary, so my appreciation for the great couture houses has only grown, with Chanel staying at the very top of my list.

Beyoncé made me actually gasp out loud. The Olivier Rousteing crystal skeleton gown was theatrical with a feathered cape that took six people to carry and a headpiece that meant business. Only Beyoncé could pull that off. Drama is hard to do well, and she doesn’t just bring it, she builds it like an architect, every crystal placed on purpose and every reference layered in, all the way down to the callback to the 2003 Roberto Cavalli ribcage dress that the Beyhive noticed the moment she walked the steps. That kind of premeditation is so Virgo it should come with a birth chart attached. When asked what the night meant for her, she didn’t give a fashion answer. She talked about her daughter Blue Ivy and how proud she was of her…. Every mother could relate to that answer and the look she gave when she looked at Blue. Jay-Z walked up in Louis Vuitton, Blue Ivy in white Balenciaga right beside her, and the photograph of the three of them at the top of those steps was a love letter to the Black family. It was legacy!

And then Anne Hathaway, who never misses, walked onto that carpet in a custom black and white Michael Kors gown hand-painted by the artist Peter McGough and finished with a glittering Bulgari collar at her throat. Black and white is my color, always has been. I almost named her my best dressed of the night right then. The dress was the most literal interpretation of fashion as art on the entire carpet, and yet Anne wore it like it was a Tuesday. There has been a quiet shift in her style over the last two years and this look was the moment that shift made itself fully known.

When I sit with the whole night, Anna Wintour is the one who feels the most like me. Chanel, the conservative no-fuss hair, the tailored line through everything she puts on. Nicole was sleek and put together, which is the polish I keep coming back to. Anne in that strapless black and white gown got me, because I love a strapless gown and that one belonged in a museum. And Beyoncé. what she embodied that night, with her personal theme being family and that photograph of her with Jay-Z and Blue Ivy at the top of the steps, did something. It made her a winner of her own kind.