Naomi Osaka’s outfit at this year’s Met Gala is a game, set, and match. The tennis star, 23, arrived at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City on Monday, Sept. 13 in an extravagant Louis Vuitton gown. With a theme that pays homage to American fashion this year, Naomi stunned in the ensemble with swirls of blue, purple, and red that pulls from both her Haitian and Japanese cultures.
The celebrated tennis star joins Timothée Chalamet, Billie Eilish, and Amanda Gorman as co-chair of this year’s gala, while Tom Ford, Adam Mosseri, and Anna Wintour serve as honorary chairs of fashion’s buzziest and most exclusive soirée. This time around, the exhibition will be broken into two parts.
Part one, entitled “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion,” will be on view on September 18 and “establish a modern vocabulary of fashion in the United States,” per the press release, and showcase works by a diverse group of designers. It will explore “belonging, comfort, delight, exuberance, fear, sentimentality, and well-being.”
Part two, entitled “In America: An Anthology of Fashion,” will be on view in May 5, 2022 and feature “women’s and men’s historical and contemporary dress dating from the 18th century to the present,” including sportswear, “in vignettes installed in select period rooms.” It will “explore the role of dress in shaping American identity and address the complex and layered histories of the rooms.”
This year, a livestream of the event will be available exclusively on Vogue’s platforms. Singer Keke Palmer and comedian Ilana Glazer will co-host the event and offer “unprecedented access” to fashion’s biggest night as they interview A-list celebrities and designers as they arrive on the red carpet.
Andrew Bolton, the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute, emphasized the sentimentality of this year’s gala in a press release. “Over the past year, largely because of the pandemic, the connections to what we wear have become more emotional,” Andrew said. “This has meant an increased emphasis on sentiment over practicality and a heightened appreciation of the values rather than the vagaries of fashion.”