How to cinch it with a Cummerbund

The many ways to style one of the Met Gala's most seen accessories

- Manish Mishra

Besides a variety of hats and walking sticks, the accessory that stood out at this year's Met Gala, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute Benefit, was the cummerbund. From Shah Rukh Khan, Sabyasachi Mukherjee and Adrien Brody to Law Roach and Nick Jonas, many male celebrities sported the wide sash worn across the waist and hips in contrasting colours and prints, trying to match the 2025 theme of "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style". Female stars, too, added the cummerbund—classically designed to flatten and smoothen the portion where the trousers meet the shirt—to their sharply tailored suits and suit-like dresses. The actor who stood out was Mindy Kaling in a custom Harbison Studios suit, with a satin white tie and red and blue embellishments, and a cummerbund doubling as a train.

Long before the cummerbund (originating from the Urdu term kamarband, meaning "waistband", sashes worn around the waist in India) became a decorative piece, it was part of the army officer's uniform during British Raj as a more comfortable alternative to the waistcoat. While it's hard to zero in on the cummerbund's origins, it was part of the clothing culture in the Ottoman Empire, Crete and Nepal.