With a white tie dress code and corresponding exhibition theme in the technically-superior American couturier Charles James, this year’s Anna Wintour’s Metropolitan Museum Of Art’s Costume Institute’s Gala Ball’s Benefit – or the Met Gala – cannot even be dealt with on a whole other level.
ICYMI, the Met Gala is The Oscars Of Fashion: that is, you get most – if not all – of the A-List game of the Oscars but with added benefits, like the world’s 10est supermodels and musicians cavorting with chic designers and your favourite film and TV ingenues; a dress code that invites risk-taking haute couture moments; and none of the pained pizza delivery guy gags and musical numbers that we’ve come to expect from the Academy Awards.
Herewith, the most major looks from the year’s most #major red carpet.
Anna Wintour is coming in Chanel Couture crafted by blind Belgian nuns from a thousand hand-cut paillettes and rendered in a colour palette that I can only now associate with the band-aids blind Belgian nuns would need to apply to their needlepoint wounds after one hundred hours of craftsmanship.
Expensive, beautiful blooms of used bandaids, but used band-aids nonetheless.
Met Gala MVP, SJP, looks every bit the patron of the arts she is in an Oscar de la Renta ball gown with a windowpane train, logomania detailing and v. on-trend Dominique Ansel cronut hair.
Though her face here suggests otherwise, rich tween Hailee Steinfeld looks every part an incredible youth in a Prabal Gurung Nenish tart with cray train.
The fictional character whose life I fear for more than my own (her, and maybe the Stark children), Megan Draper, does paréd down – but still perfect – in Pollock-esque Michael Kors.
John Legend and Chrissy Teigan, both in Ralph Lauren Collection, are the evening’s prime contenders for the couple with whom you’d most like to initiate a threesome.
I can’t not include one of Teigan’s characteristically brilliant Tweets:
Excited to show the pork chop oil blisters on my wrist on the carpet tonight
— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) May 5, 2014
Karolina Kurkova is regal resplendence itself in very literal, dramatic Marchesa.
Do you love it? ‘It’ being a dégradé velvet slip by Donna Karen and lavender hair on an ever-so-slightly underwhelming but always-an-improvement-considering Nicole Richie.
I don’t love this Carolina Herrera print, but Emmy Rossum looks Poised® to perfection, like a glam incontinence product.
Zoe Saldana is unfairly beautiful, so it’s a real shame that this tiered Michael Kors duvet is so many kinds of deflating for her and I both.
Literally dying for Liu Wen in a giant, ridiculous Zac Posen circus tent.
Speaking of Posen, here’s Count von Count himself – the heir apparent to Charles James – posing with the elegant as balls-lowered-into-a-giant-martini-glass, Dita Von Teese. She looks like an incredible Cadillac.
BRB, not dealing.
Luh me some @badgalriri (whose Instagram account as of today sadly no longer exists) pouring it up in Stella McCartney. Not loving the stank faces on the Haters in the background, where they belong.
POTUS and her husband in a Givenchy robe and, presumably, Tom Ford respectively. Bow down, ***Flawless, woke up like this, et cetera.
A+ for Most Improved. The reportedly recently wed Kimye in game-lifting, crotch-grazing Lanvin.
On Wednesdays, we wear underwhelming Ralph Lauren 🙁
Suki Waterhouse is a heavenly lion fish ensconced in tiered Burberry tulle.
Allison Williams’s ODLR gown is the equivalent of a bottle of Fanta when all you want is an actual orange because you have a Vitamin C deficiency and then you get scurvy and now you’re literally going to die. Kidding. She looks pleas to the next lev.
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley cares not for adhering to dress codes, wears an Olivier Rousteing for Balmain number better suited to last year’s PUNK: Chaos to Couture theme or a round in the Colosseum.
*SHARP INTAKE OF BREATH*
Diane Kruger in an ice sculpture crafted by Jason Wu for Hugo Boss feat. The Hand of God.
Hold me close, tiny ice dancer. Elizabeth Olsen, one of the many faces of Miu Miu, wears Miu Miu speed performance wear. Stacy Martin is all like, ‘flesh coloured body stocking girl wut’.
Perpetual ingenue Michelle Williams is très casual in a Louis Vuitton shift that from afar looks like some inoffensive print work but up close is actually some next level laborious tinsel embroidery shit. Forever blessed. 
Dakota Johnson is [your best Fifty Shades of Navy] pun. She wears Jason Wu.
Brie Larson is deliciously off-code in #stronglook Au Prada, and this isn’t even her final form. Go watch Short Term 12 now. A++
Solange Minelli makes questionable life choices in apricot 3.1 Phillip Lim.
Sweet Van Gogh’s ears! Katie Holmes, putting the ‘shart’ in ‘chartreuse’.
Selina Gomez also putting the ‘er, no’ in ‘Cabernet Sauvignon’, poured into silky DVF. Kidding! She actually looks sweet and more than a li’l spicy. Notes of ‘oak’ and ‘find me at the after party’.
The couple that wears matching Thom Browne together, look like fun Transylvanian butlers together. Straight off-Broadway, NPH and David Burtka never not embracing a theme wholeheartedly.
Alexa Chung does her best to undo years of stylish good will engendered by being chic as sin with an underwhelming Erdem dust ruffle.
Lily Allen is trying to take – and so far succeeding at taking – a selfie with everyone at the Met Ball while wearing tiered tulle Chanel.
When you earn $42 million in a year, you’ll also be able to do this in a black silk and velvet guipure Balenciaga lace gown, and get away with murder too.
Psychosexual ballerina Rita Ora tries and fails to execute the cheekbone enhancing suck-your-cheeks-in pout and wears creeping tulle Donna Karen.
Kate Upton mourns the exposure of 80% of her milkmaid soft skin in Dolce & Gabbana. Alternatively, puts the ‘real fun’ in ‘funereal’.
Hello, Sunshine. Mrs. Seth Cohen is exquisite in nude Pucci and butter soft tresses worthy of a Van der Woodsen.
Kristen Wiig can’t keep a straight face in a severe Balenciaga skant scenario.
Sweet angel Lupita Nyong’o is the catch of the day in Prada, a superfluous headband and a fun pompadour.
Just a regular gal, workin’ hard, saving up her hard-earned babysitting coin to spend big at Oscar de la Renta.
This is so Ann Perkins and that is so not an endorsement.
Phucks Donatella gives about what you think of her: zero.
Temperature of the mess that is this situation: hot.
The best part about Johnny Depp’s accessories closet these days is Amber Heard.
Can you ever just be anything other than whelmed by Zooey Deschanel’s red carpet choices? She wears Tommy Hilfinger with a stepped-on-loo-roll train.
Business Casual Glamour on Shetland moguls, Ashley and Mary Kate Olsen.
Kristen Stewart beams ecstatically in incandescent Chanel Couture.
Lena Dunham takes things way too seriously in fun Giambattista Valli.
Emma Stone is a Baby Spice dream in Francisco Costa for Calvin Klein Collection.
As is li’l Annie Hathaway, the hardest working gal in all of theatre camp.
Photo of the Night/Life goes to Shailene Woodley and KiKi Dunst. Both are in Rodarte, only one is in a Death Star. The other one eats clay and feeds her vagina sunlight. Google it.
Florence Welch is this year’s Kim Kardashian’s Kouch in Valentino Couture.
Naomi Watts cannot be faulted in the petals of heavenly Givenchy Haute Couture.
Old Hollywood Glamour? More like Smouldering Jolly Good Stamina. Gucci, no doubt.
Kate Mara also wears what I think is Valentino, and achieves what I think Florence Welch was reaching for.
I see your Pharrell, and raise you Erykah Badu in Givenchy.
Marion Cotillard continues her winning streak of always looking lovely but failing to nail the brief due to contractual obligations to Dior.
I didn’t get it at first but now I do and I’m going all in. Sarah Silverman looks movie star phenom in Zac Posen, accessorised with her season two Masters Of Sex co-star and IRL Master of Sex IN THE BEDROOM, Michael Sheen.
You wouldn’t think it possible, but Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal found a way to make Full-On Haute Couture evening wear look Brooklyn. She wears and carries Valentino.
Another Miu Miu ingenue, Margot Robbie kicks off the Australian contingent and looks super chic in Prada hot massage stones.
Old mates.
Started at the Logies now she’s here. Kylie Minogue is a Marchesa peace offering to appease The Voice ratings gods.
Imogen Poots misses the Charles James mark but still manages to look fresh to death, cute ‘n sexy, in Proenza Schouler.
Adele Exarchopoulos’s mirrored trompe l’oeil mirrored Prada column is, for want of a better Fergie reference, G.L.A.M.O.R.O.U.S.
And here’s what Madonna would have worn had it not been nixed by Anna Wintour and she decided to stay home instead.
We’ve finally come full circle:
