No imagination, only excess

This year's Met Gala, the fancy-dress competition for the ultra-wealthy, was a memorable one.

- Pooja Singh

(from left) Karan Johar, Sudha Reddy, and Isha Ambani.

(GETTY IMAGES AFP)

Not just because one of the world's richest tech bros, Jeff Bezos, and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, served as honorary chairs—a first—but also because the evening of 4 May saw the largest Indian contingent yet ascend the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, with each attendee reportedly paying $100,000 to attend fashion's most exclusive fundraiser.Ananya Birla, Isha Ambani, Karan Johar, Manish Malhotra, Sudha Reddy, Natasha Poonawalla, Sawai Padmanabh Singh and Gauravi Kumari were in attendance, presenting their interpretation of the 2026 Met Gala dress code, "Fashion is Art", which challenged guests to treat the body as a canvas, express their relationship with fashion "as an embodied art form and celebrate the countless depictions of the dressed body throughout art history".

Did the Indian contingent get the memo right? That depends on whether you believe fashion as art is best expressed through spectacle, symbolism or genuine risk-taking. Most of the looks felt more reverential than radical—heavy on craftsmanship, wealth flaunting and cultural signalling, extremely light on imagination and surprise.

(AFP)