Every year during the first Monday of May people around the world wait to witness the biggest celebrities gather at the hottest, most critiqued fashion event of the year. The Met Gala began decades ago in 1946, when local galas were held to fund the Met’s Costume Institute and has since then solidified the role that fashion plays in popular culture.

This year’s Met Gala dress code was “The Garden of Time”, which parallels the Costume Institute’s exhibition theme “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion”. The exhibit explored the evolution of fashion over four centuries, highlighting the ways in which designers have drawn upon historical and natural influences to create modern masterpieces.

As a creative I get very excited when we get a window into the world of creation. The Met Gala red carpet shows off pieces that were the output of hours of intense work by teams of people — but these works of art also originated from the studio creative process and design thinking which I relish.

Here’s some of my favorite pieces for this year’s Met Gala and why:

#1: Schiaparelli’s Jennifer Lopez dress creation by Daniel Roseberry

I’ve loved watching the creative process of Daniel Roseberry, creative director of the French haute couture house Schiaparelli. I remember seeing this video that took us inside his atelier that detailed his thought process. The way his sketches were fused with digital collage work to amplify his designs is truly inspiring.

That same creative process and how valuable this thinking can be in shaping the final product can be seen in the way this custom dress for Jennifer Lopez was created. The dress paid homage to Elsa Schiaparelli’s obsession with the butterfly, the surrealist embodiment of metamorphosis.

#2: Maison Margiela Artisanal by John Galliano for Zendaya

Zendaya’s dress had an haute couture silhouette that was inspired by the 1930s mythological works of photographer Madame Yevonde and imbued with the memory of orgiastic scenes of bacchanals of Ancient Greece. The bias-cut ‘siren dress’ is a key expression in the creative practice of John Galliano, which first appeared at Maison Margiela in the Spring-Summer 2020 Artisanal Collection. Infused with a certain ‘snobisme’, the look is given the epithet of ‘86 and Lexington’, a nod to the subway station near The Met.

The dress was crafted with ‘retrograding’, a technique through which variations of thread-work, appliqué or encrustation degrade from the bottom to the top of a garment like the linear base drawing of a painting that hasn’t yet been finished. The ‘reverse swatching’ technique employed in the hat exchanges the fabrics traditionally used for certain parts of dressmaking with materials of a contrasting value.

And if you have time to see more of John Galliano’s process you can watch this wonderful piece on Vogue.

#3: Anna Wintour in bespoke LOEWE

Special mention for artistry and craft — we have to talk about Anna’s coat.

Inspired by a circa 1889 evening cape by 19th century designer Charles Frederick Worth and tailoring from the LOEWE Fall-Winter 2024 women’s collection, Anna’s tuxedo in wool with a silk satin shawl collar is decorated with floral motifs using hand-dyed feathers, tonal beading, and pearl embroidery. The jacket is paired with a long sleeve dress in bias-cut silk satin.

In closing I’m reminded of a quote by another incredible designer: