Sky Ferreira's Met Gala Dress Was a 'True Fashion Emergency'
Fashion

Sky Ferreira's Met Gala Dress Was a 'True Fashion Emergency'

by Evan Ross Katz

Charli XCX for JW Anderson. Cynthia Nixon in a yellow leather, double-breasted Sergio Hudson suit at the GLAAD Awards. Olivia Colman in Alexander McQueen at the BAFTAs. It was a weekend of slays, but let’s back it up and zoom out to some of the biggest stories from the last two weeks that deserve unpacking.

Met Gala Post-Mortem

A week's time is the necessary lapse to look back at the Met Gala with it still top of mind, but with the necessary distance for unaffected perspective. Who were my top 10? Sarah Jessica Parker in Christopher John Rogers, Amber Valletta in Azzaro, Adut Akech in Christian Lacroix, Precious Lee in Altuzarra, Erykah Badu in Marni, Lizzo in Thom Browne, Carey Mulligan in Schiaparelli, Jodie Turner-Smith in Gucci, Irina Shayk in Burberry and Laura Harrier in H&M.

Sarah Jessica Parker in Christopher John Rogers (Photo via Getty)

Those looks are making the rounds, but a necessary honorable mention must be made to pop priestess Sky Ferreira, making her triumphant return to the Met Gala in a Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy-inspired dress from designer Conner Ives. "I grew up on Tumblr and obviously bowed to Sky growing up, so this was so huge for me,” Ives says, articulating the sentiments of a generation of Tumblr obsessives like myself. Ferreira is beginning a press cycle for what maybe believe to be a new album, which was expected to begin its rollout in March. As Ferreira devotees know, patience is embedded into the DNA of her fandom. Ives says the whole thing came together very last minute, receiving a phone call on Saturday night asking if he could make the 48-hour turnaround happen. "I was supposed to be dressing someone else which had fallen through that morning, so it was a very serendipitous moment.”

Turns out, Ferreira too had alternative plans. "To be completely honey, this was not the original dress Sky was slated to wear," says stylist Ron Hartleben. "But God had a plan and in true fashion emergency glamour, we switched to Conner Ives the day before the Met." When he saw the finale bias cut wedding gown from Ives’s Fall 2022 collection, he knew it was meant to be. "I truly think Conner Ives is the future and has that special something like the greats before him.” No lies detected.

The biggest viral moments tho? They weren’t the fashions. We got Jack Harlow attempting to flirt with an unimpressed Emma Chamberlain, who was back as host of the YouTube channel red carpet livestream. Chamberlain delivered the night’s other big viral moment during her interaction with Gigi Hadid. A necessary transcription:

Emma: Do you color your hair for this?

Gigi: We’re in the same boat tuh-night, maw-mah.

Emma: I just dyed my hair yesterday...

Gigi: No, you look so major. When I saw you on the red carpet I was like, “Oh, slay.” I swear!

Emma: Stop!

Gigi: I swear. Big slay.

Emma: Wait, like, big slay?

Gigi: Yeah, big slay. You’re killing it.

Emma: Stop it, girl.

We could talk about the Kim Kardashian of it all, but borrowing a page from Jennifer Coolidge’s character in Best In Show, we could also not talk about it.

Ncuti Gatwa Served

Top toot of the week goes to the new Doctor on Doctor Who, Nucti Gatwa. To quote Juvenile, "Them titties sitting nice." The look is from the brand Orange Culture Nigeria’s Spring 2022 collection courtesy of designer Adebayo Oke-Lawal. “He is bold, he is colorful and he loves an androgynous fashion moment,” Oke-Lawal says. “He is also a Black man killing it in spaces that were originally maybe 'not meant for him' as seen with the controversy of him being placed as Doctor Who.”

The look is described aptly as a peekaboo blazer, with a tassel dance skirt and tailored pants. “The skirt reminds me of childhood traditional dancewear and I always loved seeing it in motion,” he says, adding that red carpet is like a dance, a performance. The look itself is from a collection, called "Peacock Riot," which Oke-Lawal says was about using clothing as a form of protest against societal issues. He mentions specific protests that erupted last year in Nigeria in defense of youths that had been attacked, even killed, because of the way they dressed.

“For the collection we wanted to embody all the physical fashions that we wear that they constantly utilize against us and embody that in looks as a form of protest,” he says. “For example showing off skin, which is why we have the low cut cleavage on a blazer and the tassels on the skirt — a man seen wearing a skirt here would be attacked — so this look is an entire form of protest against all those societal norms.”

The bare chest is an homage to the first look that Gatwa and stylist Felicity Kay did together at London Fashion Week in 2009: a womens green silk open to the navel Ami shirt with Bottega Veneta trousers. "While 2019 wasn't that long ago, it was hard to take a gender fluid approach to styling back then as a lot of brands were still very set in their gender categories,” Kay says. "I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking the red carpet feels like a much more interesting place than it did 10 years ago. Traditionally, as a stylist, there was pressure to create a sartorial blank slate when styling actors so people to see them as different characters — unlike styling musicians, who you worked with to amplify their personality. So it's exciting to see this movement towards a more expressive approach to red carpet fashion." Amen!

Lady Gaga’s Flying Dress From 2013 Resurfaces

A spiritual equivalent to the meat dress, the egg, the coat of kermits and the latex condom look, the Italian girl from New York, Stefani Joanna Germanatto, went viral last week over a stunt pulled nearly a decade ago. Even Rolling Stone, who wrote about the dress when it actually debuted, was fooled. This, the second instance of late, of a fake Twitter account managing to gain enough traction to make real news. In actuality, Gaga didn’t even so much as attend the Top Gun premiere with her new bestie Tom Cruise.

Then again, she’s busy performing in Vegas, prepping the Chromatica tour (of which I’m sure we’ll be writing about) and promoting the launch of Haus Labs at Sephora. Flying dress Gaga is so, to quote Hilary Duff, “Girl wearing a skirt as a top.”

Welcome to "Wear Me Out,"a column by pop culture fiend Evan Ross Katz that takes a deep dive into celebrity dressing. From award shows and movie premieres to grocery store runs, he'll keep you up to date on what your favorite celebs have recently worn to the biggest and most inconsequential events.

Photo via Getty