18 Met Gala Wardrobe Malfunctions

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03-05-2025

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The Met Gala is the biggest night in fashion, but not everything is picture-perfect. Extravagent, expensive clothes are often delicate, which can lead to disaster.
Here are 18 Met Gala wardrobe malfunctions:
1. The little zipper on Kylie Jenner 's Alexander Wang dress at the 2018 Met Gala was a controversial fashion choice, but it turns out, it wasn't actually supposed to be part of the look in the first place! In a 2020 Instagram story post, she said, "This dress wasn't supposed to have a zipper but it ripped as I was squeezing into it, so we added it on the way out the door."
Here's a closer look.
2. At the 2019 Met Gala, Cara Delevingne accessorized her rainbow Dior outfit with a matching scepter. In an Instagram video she shared a year later, she had to fix the scepter in the back of the car on the way to the event. She captioned it, "It all looks great once we get to the carpet, but this was our journey to the Met Gala on this day last year. My scepter broke in the lobby of the hotel, some stranger gave us a glue gun, and I had a 10lb hair piece clipped to my head. We don't always have to feel or be perfect to look 100!"
Here's the video.
3. At the 2018 Met Gala, Selena Gomez didn't have an issue with her Coach dress — the problem was her self-tanner! Three years later, she told Vogue, "I was getting ready, and we wanted to add some color. So [I] put on some of this tanning lotion, and it looked really beautiful and very even. As the evening kept going on, it was getting a little darker and darker, and I didn't notice it."
"I'm at the Met Gala — basically one of the most prestigious, beautiful events — and I'm walking, trying to look all beautiful, and I look at a photo of myself when I sit down, and I am completely orange," she said.
However, she was able to laugh about it. To beat online commenters to the punchline, she posted an Instagram video of herself running away from the ball with the caption, "Me when I saw my pictures from MET."
4. Lucy Liu suffered a zipper malfunction at the 2004 Met Gala. She told People, "I was wearing Ungaro, and Giambattista Valli was the designer at the time. [Valli] met me at the hotel, and he was like, 'Oh my God, the zipper won't work!' He had to sew me into the dress, and then I had to cut myself out of it. My stylist was there, too; they were both sewing. I could go to the bathroom; it was just that the side zipper didn't work. That happens when you have a dress that's very unique; it just starts to fall apart, unfortunately."
"I still have the dress, actually. It's beautiful, but you would have to re-make it to wear it again. It's pretty chopped up. I could probably take parts of it and then add to the sides or remake it, but the material was very patterned and beautiful. That's a real story, and I have the evidence. It was great," she said.
5. At the 2014 Met Gala, Hayden Panettiere tripped down the stairs in her Dennis Basso gown. According to Us Weekly, when she got to the top of the steps, she said, "Hallelujah! I made it up the stairs!"
Here's what her dress looked like when she was standing.
6. At the 2022 Met Gala, Katy Perry accessorized her Oscar de la Renta dress with Aquazarra heels. In an Instagram video shared by Derek Blasberg, YouTube's head of fashion and beauty, Katy said, "She is beauty, and she is grace. She's also got her foot stuck in a vent."
Here's what her outfit looked like on the red carpet.
7. Kristen Stewart walked the 2021 Met Gala red carpet in her Chanel look without any problems, but when she got inside, it was another story. She told People, "So I go to the Met ball, and there's a new set of kids at the Chanel table. There was a beautiful young tennis player [Emma Raducanu] and a young actress [Whitney Peak]. I'm talking to them, saying, 'Welcome, I've done this a couple times,' and they look like I'm scaring them. I look down, and literally, my [nipple] is in their faces. I was like, 'Okay, sorry, I'll put that away now.' They're like, 'Who is this crazy old actress at the Met Ball?' This is going to be a story for them when they're older."
8. Anne Hathaway almost didn't make it to the 2014 Met Gala because of a last-minute issue with her Calvin Klein gown. On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, she said, "I was about a block away from the Met, and I was like, 'Wow, this is amaz— achoo!' And I sneezed, and my dress, like, just straight up split open...I felt so terrible. So, I'm pulling up, and Francisco [Costa, the designer] was so proud of this dress. And I put the window down, and he's like, 'Baby, you look amazing.' I'm like, 'Thank you so much! My dress just broke.' And I've never actually seen someone turn green before, and he did."
She continued, "I'm like, 'It's gonna be fine. I can go on the carpet. I'm gonna keep my arm down, and I'll hold it in place. And we'll get inside, and there's gonna be a needle and thread.' And he goes, 'Pull over!' So we pulled over, went to a hotel. They found a seamstress. She sewed me into it, and the big thing was, 'Are we gonna make it in time for the red carpet?' because it takes a minute. So we show up. There's nobody on the red carpet. I say, 'Oh my God, did they miss it?' And they said, 'You're just ahead of Rihanna! Go!' Apparently, the only rule you really can't break at the Met Ball is you cannot show up after Rihanna. That's just gauche."
9. At the 2024 Met Gala, Venus Williams's Marc Jacobs gown was covered in minuscule mirrors. She told E! News, "It's, you know, based off the theme of today. We're showing all these dresses that are too fragile to wear, and so he wanted to bring in the fragility of, like, mirrors. It's very fragile. I only broke one! I broke one zipping up. It was too late [to replace it] 'cause I was already running behind!"
Jeff Kravitz / FilmMagic / Via Getty
10. When Anya Taylor-Joy wore a weighty Dolce & Gabbana gown to the 2018 Met Gala, Jimmy Fallon "saved [her] life." On The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, she told the host, "I was wearing a dress that was ridiculously heavy, and I couldn't really move, and I was just kind of trying to get through the evening. And at the end of the night, I'm at the top of the stairs. The gorgeous Hailee Steinfeld walks past me, has a very complicated, like, three-train thing, and I get wrapped up in it. And I'm like, 'Oh, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die on the steps of the Met, darling.' But literally, just out of nowhere, the 'hand of God' came out and pulled me out of it, and it was you. And you were just so sweet about it. You were like, 'Hey, I'm Jimmy. Nice to meet you.' I was like, 'Okay, thank you.'"
Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images
11. At the 2023 Met Gala, Chloe Fineman wore a Wiederhoeft dress. She told Entertainment Tonight, "There might be a minor tear somewhere, but I'm not gonna tell you where. It's hard to sit in traffic in a corset...It is. It's really a challenge."
Kevin Mazur/MG23 / Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue
12. At the 2024 Met Gala, Camila Cabello wore a Ludovic de Saint Sernin gown, and she carried a rose in a block of ice. She told Extra, "It was a purse, but then it broke like five minutes into being in line, so I called my stylist. I was like, 'What do I do?' I was like, '[Fuck it], I'll take it as a clutch.' So, you know, we're just trying things here. It's all we're doing."
Kevin Mazur/MG24 / Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue
13. At the 2024 Met Gala, model and influencer Haley Kalil wore a Marc Bouwer gown. She told E! News, "One person made this dress in four days. One person by hand in four days — and this morning, the zipper broke. We had the classic zipper moment. I mean, it is the Met, so he had to fix the zipper, and here I am. It worked! We got it!"
Kristina Bumphrey / WWD via Getty Images
She also said that getting ready was "a lot of chaos," adding, "The behind-the-scenes of all of this is chaos, but it's fun chaos. There's a lot of running around. My nail broke. I had to run to a nail salon this morning. Oh, we've had all the issues, but all the issues mean we're gonna have a good rest of the day...I would make it here even if I lost an arm."
WWD / WWD via Getty Images
14. At the 2022 Met Gala, Nicki Minaj liked the look of her Burberry gown, but she didn't like the fit. In 2023, she told Vogue, "I just realized just this moment that actually there was something good that came out of this. It's what really cemented the fact for me that I had to get my breast reduction. I did my fittings and stuff. I told him I loved this hat. I loved what the outfit was giving, but I said, 'You guys, listen, look, these boobs are gonna be spilling out.' And by the time we were ready to go, I looked in the mirror, I said, 'Guys, my boobs are still spilling out.' And Naomi Campbell was walking in and out of the room, looking at me, like, 'Girl, let's go.' I knew before we even left the room that the boobs were about to have a night of their own."
Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue
15. At the 2018 Met Gala, Kim Kardashian wore a golden Versace gown. On SnapChat, she shared that it got caught on other attendees' outfits during the party. Sharing a video of her dress stuck on SZA's skirt, Kim said, "When your dress is connected to this beauty. We're stuck together!"
Kim Kardashian / Via instagram.com
Here's Kim's dress on the red carpet.
Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images
16. At the 2022 Met Gala, Kim Kardashian infamously wore the 60-year-old dress that Marilyn Monroe wore when she sang "Happy Birthday" to President Kennedy. She told Vogue that when she first tried it on, she "wanted to cry because [the dress] can't be altered at all." So, in a bid to fit into the dress, she lost a significant amount of weight in a short time through unhealthy measures. Dietician Elaina Efird told BuzzFeed, "My message for people wanting to attempt to do what Kim K did is DO NOT DO THIS. It is a terrible example that she is setting, and her behavior is perpetuating eating disorders."
ANGELA WEISS / AFP via Getty Images
In footage TMZ released after the Met Gala, during a fitting, Kim struggled to get the dress over her butt, and once it was on, it wouldn't zip all the way. She asked, "Can we use that tie and tie it and keep it open? What if we did that and put a fur over? Oh my God, we can maybe fake it?" Ultimately, she accessorized with a fur stole, covering the back of the dress.
Gotham / Getty Images
17. Unfortunately for Kim, that wasn't the only thing that went wrong with her 2022 Met Gala look. She told Vogue that she wanted to debut a new Marilyn-inspired blonde at the event, so, though lightening hair typically takes months, she waited until the last minute. She said, "I did want a physical change, too, so I thought I would wait and do it for this, so I'm spending a day straight dyeing my hair — 14 hours straight! — to get it done." Many fans criticized the final results, calling her hair "botched."
Mike Coppola / Getty Images
18. And finally, on her way to the 2023 Met Gala, Kim Kardashian got help from her daughter, North, when an issue arose with her Schiaparelli gown. Kim told Vogue, "Some [pearls] popped on the way, and I told my daughter to grab them all. They're real pearls, and she was putting them all in her purse.'
Cindy Ord/MG23 / Getty Images
After the event, when Kim got out of the car, she seemingly tripped over her Schiaparelli gown, breaking one of the strings and sending pearls everywhere. However, she kept her cool and kept going as if nothing was wrong.
MIHA, NEDA / ALEXJR / BACKGRID