Opening of ‘the dressed body’ show inspires Beyoncé, Kardashians and Skepta, as others pay tribute to fashion moments in art history

• Met Gala 2026 red carpet: the best looks in pictures

Two assets the modern 1% love to show off are their designer wardrobes … and their expensive bodies. The Met Gala opening of an exhibition about “the dressed body” presented an opportunity to do both, and it proved irresistible. The evening raised a record-breaking $42m (£31m) for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the lead sponsors Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos thought to have contributed $10m, and individual guests writing cheques for up to $1m in order to make the Anna Wintour-approved final cut.

The official dress code was “Fashion Is Art”. But the golden rule in fashion, as in life, is that those with the gold make the rules, and this elite crowd bent Wintour’s diktat according to their will. The red carpet was divided between looks that paid tribute to famous fashion moments in art history, and others that celebrated the body itself as a very modern masterpiece.

Die diesjährige Met Gala mit den Sponsoren Jeff Bezos und Lauren Sánchez Bezos war die umstrittenste aller Zeiten. Der große Boykott blieb aus. Oder rebellierten viele Stars etwa, indem sie das Motto ignorierten?

The film’s villain is a conniving tech oligarch seeking to buy his way into fashion’s inner circle. Sound familiar?

In The Devil Wears Prada 2, we’re introduced to a very different Miranda Priestly. There was a time where the all-powerful queen of fashion – who is played by Meryl Streep and based on Vogue’s longest-serving editor, Anna Wintour – could end careers with a glance. But this time, she spends most of the movie taking orders herself. First, we see her at the behest of advertisers, then publishing magnate Irv Ravitz and his irritating nepo baby son. And it isn’t long before Benji Barnes, an eccentric billionaire, shows up and threatens to dismantle the excellence she has spent her entire career championing.

In the film, Benji is played – scarily well, I should add – by Justin Theroux. After a high-profile divorce, he has had a “glow-up”, which loosely translates to losing weight and boasting a deep mahogany tan. Post-divorce, he is now in a relationship with Emily – Miranda’s acerbic former assistant, played by the scene-stealing Emily Blunt, who is described as “every girl who ignored him in high school”. Benji’s inclusion in the story feels representative of the wider media landscape, where the whims of billionaires decide which parts of the old, pre-social media world get to survive. And for Emily, she’s learning that being associated with someone so powerful has the potential to help her finally step out of Miranda’s shadow. The romance between these diametric opposites – Type A fashion queen and a nerd who grew up to become one of the world’s richest men – provides a stream of comic relief. But beyond the laughs are a deeper – and bleaker – statement about how people with enough money can buy cultural power.