Robot DOG makes an appearance at the Met Gala - dressed in a tuxedo and adorned with a 1,000-carat diamond leash
At New York's Met Gala, guests are known for attention-grabbing outfits, from Katy Perry 's human chandelier dress to Kim Kardashian 's all-black body suit.
But one attendant in particular has stolen the limelight this year – and he's not even human.
Indian-American entrepreneur Mona Patel rocked up to the annual event on Monday night with an adorable robotic dachshund in tow.
Vector the robo-dog, developed by scientists at MIT, has a 1,000-carat diamond-studded leash and his own cute little specially-fitted tuxedo.
Powered by AI and equipped with sensors, Vector has customised movement patterns and 'just the right amount of sass', Vogue India reports.
Anyone old enough to remember the BBC children's TV series Picture Book may be reminded of Sausage, the mischievous puppet dachshund.
Patel herself wore a custom suit with a cape and corseted bodice from American fashion designer Thom Browne, plus a 3D-printed hat.
Vector has been modelled after Browne's dachshund, Hector, but this robotic, tuxed-up, diamond-leashed version is 'ready to outshine me at any moment,' Patel said.
The Met Gala is the yearly fundraising social occasion in New York held on the first Monday of May where guests outdo each other with eye popping outfits.
Among those in attendance this year were Rihanna, Madonna, Nicole Kidman, Barry Keoghan, Diana Ross, Miley Cyrus, Demi Moore and Kim Kardashian.
Mona Patel is one of the less high profile names, having been described as the 'mystery woman' last year when her butterfly dress went viral.
Born in Vadodara, Gujarat before moving to the US in 2003, she is an entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist with a background in business and engineering.
Vector was constructed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where Patel obtained an MBA (Master of Business Administration).
It's believed Patel had some involvement with the design of the dog, which has been programmed with customised movement patterns.
Meanwhile, the back of her outfit was adorned with a bizarre robotic spine – taken as a nod to her engineering background.
'I've been lucky to work with brilliant engineers, and I couldn't resist bringing that part of my life onto the red carpet,' she told Harper's Bazaar.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by VOGUE India (@vogueindia)
Who is Mona Patel?
Mona Patel is an entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist, originally from India but now based in Dallas, Texas.
She moved to the US in 2003 and has since founded several companies, such as HauteX Ventures and radXai, a health tech startup
She studied at Harvard, MIT and University of Florida, as well as Gujarat University in India.
'Thom's tailoring brought tradition, while my little robot date brought the future.'
According to her LinkedIn profile, she studied computer science at Gujarat University in India before being educated at MIT, Harvard University and University of Florida.
She is the founder of radXai, a health-tech startup that uses AI 'to improve accuracy, speed and efficiency of medical imaging and interpretation'.
'We're pushing boundaries by harnessing the power of AI to reshape and transform radiology,' the description on her LinkedIn profile reads.
'We're on a mission to develop advanced AI technologies that aid radiologists and help physicians and payers in delivering affordable, precise and timely patient care.'
She is also founder of Couture For Cause, a non-profit organisation that 'aims to drive positive change through fashion and inspire every woman to realize her highest self'.
'Through fundraising events and global campaigns, we catalyze the fashion community and the industry's most influential figures and brands to create a better future for girls around the world.'
Mona Patel is also no stranger to the entertainment industry and has mingled with A-list Hollywood stars.
Back in 2021, she attended a Vogue100 event in collaboration with Kendall Jenner's 818 Tequila brand.
Meanwhile, the Met Gala has had its fair share of weird accessories, including sci-fi inspired masks, body suits, hats and even wings.
Back in 2021, singer Frank Ocean arrived at the Met Gala cradling an eerie green robotic baby in his arms.
The frightening doll came complete with human-like facial expressions, and even smiled and blinked its eyes as the two shared warm looks.
And Jared Leto carried a replica of his own head in 2019 while wearing a red gown covered with ropes of sparkling jewelry.
How a computer whiz duped the world into believing Katy Perry attended the 2024 Met Gala - all from their bedroom in Brazil!
Met Gala is the place to be seen or the biggest names in music, film, and fashion - even if some stars weren't really there.
Singer Katy Perry skipped the Met Gala in 2024, but that didn't stop her likeness from making an appearance.
In 2024, DailyMail.com talked to two superfans of pop star Katy Perry, whose work with AI image-generators 'imagined' what Perry might have worn.
The images looked so vivid and realistic that they even fooled Perry's own mother!
The images leaned heavily into the 'garden' part of 2024 Met Gala's theme, with lush, verdant ivies and floral patterns draping a simulated Perry.
In one image, the 'Firework' songwriter's hair flows in long crimped waves, like 1940s screen siren Veronica Lake; in the other, an AI Perry sports the on-trend 'wet look'.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
23 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Everyone's a winner: how awards shows became popular again
The annual Tony awards, honoring excellence in American theatre, have never exactly been a TV ratings powerhouse compared to the Oscars or Grammys. Yet the most recent ceremony experienced a surprise surge in viewership, with broadcast viewership up 44% compared to the 2024 installment. It was the largest audience since the last pre-pandemic edition in 2019. That seems to sync up with the record-setting season that the awards were celebrating, where Broadway productions featured a number of movie stars drawing huge crowds (and ticket prices). Yet apart from George Clooney and a few other familiar faces, it wasn't a particularly starry Tonys; Denzel Washington, Jake Gyllenhaal and Kieran Culkin weren't nominated, and there wasn't a single crossover mass-culture powerhouse like Hamilton or The Producers (whose winning telecasts are still the highest-rated of the 21st century). Moreover, Broadway isn't alone; the Oscars experienced ratings growth (part of a four-year upward trend), and the left-for-dead Golden Globes have stabilized. This trend goes back nearly a year, to last fall, when MTV's more specialized Video Music Awards saw an uptick and Emmy viewership jumped up 50% to a three-year high. Awards shows, so often derided as bloated, self-congratulatory ratings ploys, have somehow survived the streaming apocalypse to become broadcast TV's last stand. (Apart from real sports, of course.) In some ways, it makes sense. Very few scripted shows still command watch-it-live urgency, not least because it's not always clear when or if they air live in the first place. Awards shows, however, only really need the date; most of them run for the full prime-time block, and in some cases on multiple channels. (The VMAs are basically shown on the entire Paramount family of channels, as if to scoop up as many errant unconverted cable-watchers as possible.) It seems related to how Saturday Night Live has become one of the highest-rated shows on network TV simply by not bleeding quite as many viewers as its primetime brethren: everyone knows when and where it's on and what its deal is – yet it also doesn't require full and sustained attention to enjoy. Similarly, awards shows sprawl out like a lazy couch stretch, while also breaking into easy-to-follow segments. And despite the ubiquity of shareable online highlights – you probably could have watched three-quarters of the Tonys in 47-second clips on social media – those bits and bobs are really more fun if you're actually watching along in real time, rather than piecing together the timeline like an awards detective. Remember various apps trying to sync up Watch Parties for isolating friends during the height of Covid? Awards shows do that for you: it's live, on TV, ready for your second-screen experience. That's been true for decades at this point, since well before Elon Musk bought Twitter. (If anything, the social media landscape seems more fragmented now than it did five or six years ago.) What's emerged from the great streaming shift is that awards shows function as particularly organic second-screen entertainment, something streamers have quietly and insidiously backwards-engineered with some of their shows and movies. Scripted (shudder) 'content,' material that's clearly designed to be passively consumed while fiddling with your phone or folding laundry, tends toward clunky exposition, repeated plot points, and an overall glossy indifference to tight, engaging narrative. Viewers may not immediately clock the difference, especially if they're performing the designated distractions while watching, but the empty-calorie nature of so many streaming movies and shows may eventually (fail to) add up, especially when compared with so much great work of the past. But awards shows are already like that by design! Hosts, presenters, announcers and on-screen graphics all tell you what's happening, repeatedly. Clips, speeches and live performances even offer catch-up context for whatever plays, songs or movies you aren't personally caught up with. Rare moments of chaos or genuine spontaneity get the instant-replay treatment on social media – as do micro-expressions from just about anyone caught on camera, subject to ridiculous levels of analysis exploiting the fact that sometimes people, even famous ones, affect neutral expressions in public. Network TV has approximated a particularly celeb-saturated Instagram feed without even trying. There's probably a grim irony in the fact that many millions of people would prefer to second-screen the experience of Anora winning a bunch of Oscars than to actually sit down and pay attention to Anora – just one of many movies that is, in terms of merging art and entertainment, a lot more potent and intellectually rewarding than a veg-out in front of the Oscars, even if someone as funny as Conan O'Brien is hosting. It's possible that our modern pop-cultural feeds have been awards-ified without even realizing it, turning too many other experiences into a kind of destructively participatory sporting event. Then again, it's hard to hold that against the Tonys, which offers an annual big-budget sampler of Broadway material to a lot of viewers who don't have regular access to the highest-profile stages in the country. (Hell, some of us media types who live in New York City still had no idea what Floyd Collins was before the ceremony.) If it takes an old-fashioned self-congratulatory awards show to cheerfully force-feed us some genuine culture in the virtual company of others, hey, it sure beats scrolling alone.
Daily Mail
27 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Netflix fans 'feel violated' after graphic spitting scene in trailer for new romcom series - gasping 'that really caught me off guard!'
Netflix fans 'felt violated' after a graphic spitting scene in the trailer for a new romcom series - gasping that moment 'really caught them off guard'. Too Much, from the mind of Lena Dunham, stars Megan Stalter (Hacks) as Jessica, a thirty-something, New York workaholic, grappling with a devastating breakup. The ten-part series, coming to the streamer on July 10, sees her move across the pond to London for a fresh start. There, she meets and falls messily in love with Felix, played by Will Sharpe (The White Lotus) - a layabout musician and an entirely unexpected, unlikely match. The trailer dropped on YouTube yesterday - but fans in the comments were shocked by a particular scene in it that jarred with its classic romcom vibe. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new Showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. Too Much stars Megan Stalter (Hacks), left, as Jessica, a thirty-something, New York workaholic, grappling with a devastating breakup One shot shows Felix spitting into Jessica's mouth as they lie in bed together One shot shows Felix spitting into Jessica's mouth as they lie in bed together - prompting viewers to complain: 'The spitting in mouth scene violated me.'; 'That spitting scene is not gonna leave me for a while now.'; 'OK, I'm not alone. I stopped to read the comments at the spitting scene.'; 'The spitting really caught me off guard OMG.'; 'I felt violently touched after seeing that spitting scene.'; 'What in the spitting jump scare was that?' Punning on the show's title, one said: 'Yeah, the spitting scene was Too Much for me.' But some were not so taken aback by it as others, referring to Lena's most famous TV creation, Girls, which aired on HBO from 2012 to 2017: 'Those of you shocked by the spitting scene have clearly never seen Girls.'; The trailer dropped on YouTube yesterday - but fans in the comments were shocked by a particular scene in it that jarred with its classic romcom vibe But some were not so taken aback by it as others 'As a gay man, that spitting scene is tame. Y'all freakin' over nothing.' Fans were mostly very excited to see the series hit the small screen next month: 'Oh, this actually, genuinely looks good. Is this the start of a Dunhamaissance?'; 'We love a plus-size lead who knows what she wants. So excited for this!'; 'Too Much looks like exactly the kind of chaotic comfort watch I need right now. Who else is ready to binge this entire thing in one sitting?' The romcom boasts a star-studded cast, with Stephen Fry, Andrew Scott, Richard E Grant, Kit Harington, Rita Ora, Jessica Alba, Rhea Perlman, Jennifer Saunders, Emily Ratajkowski, Adwoa Aboah and Lena herself all starring. It is made by the producers of Love Actually and Notting Hill and is co-created by Lena, 39, and her husband, Peruvian-British musician Luis Felber, 38. Lena told Netflix news site Tudum their own love story is similar to Jessica and Felix's: 'When I first started coming to the UK for work... I thought to myself, "I want to write something about the experience of being a foreigner here and the fantasies we have of [London] versus the realities". 'Then, when I met my husband Luis, I felt like I was experiencing all of that but in the context of a relationship.' Fans were mostly very excited to see the series hit the small screen next month But she also said, at a Next on Netflix event in London earlier this year, Megan had made the role of Jessica her own. 'She is truly an old-fashioned physical comedian in the vein of Carol Burnett or Elaine May but she has something really modern and also really sweet about her and she can move between intense comedy and heavy drama with ease', Lena gushed. 'She just felt like the perfect foil to feel how Americans contrast against the people of this nation. 'Because it didn't take very long for me to realise that while you technically speak the same language, there are some vast differences I am still coming to understand.' Megan loves how the show overturned tropes both about romcoms - and how Americans see London: 'The show does a really good job of knowing what it is but then also flipping it on its head.' Her co-star Will agreed: 'It has such an awareness of rom-com... but it also does have some rougher edges. 'That makes the sweeter aspects all the more powerful because there's an honesty to it.' Megan saw herself in her character: 'Jessica and I both wear our hearts on our sleeve. We're emotional, we're dramatic, we're weird and remain that way as adults.' Lena said while the show does have some serious moments, she hoped it could mostly act as a source of escapist joy for viewers. 'You can take a half hour away from your day and feel like you are part of a world that is truthful but just a little more sweet and tender than the actual world we live in,' she explained. Since working on Girls, Lena has continued her acting work, appearing in American Horror Story, The Simpsons and Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. She has also kept working as a writer, producer and director, creating American comedy Camping, starring Jennifer Garner and David Tennant. She also directed some episodes of British show Industry, about newbie investment bankers, and wrote 2022 medieval comedy Catherine Called Birdy, starring Bella Ramsey, Billie Piper and Andrew Scott. Lena swapped her $2.8million Los Angeles bungalow for a property in London after marrying Luis in September 2021, at a members-only club in the capital. The pair met in January 2021 on a blind date, which they were set up on by friends. Luis has previously told The New York Times their first date was about eight hours long - and they moved in together just months later. The pair met in January 2021 on a blind date, which they were set up on by friends. Pictured: Lena at their London home 'I think when you know, you know', he said. 'I've only been alive for 35 years in this lifetime, and I think it's another archaic thing for guys to hide their feelings. 'I'm way more into the flow of getting to know the person. 'And I think Lena's the same, and I think - I'm going to sound cheesy - but when you find your soulmate, you just know.'
Reuters
30 minutes ago
- Reuters
Hats on! A milliner talks Ascot's most important accessory
LONDON, June 12 (Reuters) - At her London studio, Merve Bayindir carefully glues on dried flowers onto a pale pink saucer hat. Nearby, an array of other colourful headpieces are on display. The Turkish-born milliner has been busy making hats for guests attending the annual Royal Ascot racing event, where hoheadwear is a must. "It is the biggest runway. It's the Oscars. It's the Golden is what it is for because you can't see that many amazing hats in one spot at the same time for a week," she told Reuters. The horse-racing event, held in Ascot just outside London, kicks off on June 17 for five days. It has become as much known for the colourful fashion as for the sport. Its various enclosures have different dress codes - the strictest is for the royal enclosure. 'You have to have minimum ten centimetres of diameter on a hat," Bayindir said. "So (for) the ladies in royal enclosure, we always say make sure that your hat is not a fascinator," she added, referring to elaborate, decorative headpieces, often fixed on a band or clip. For the Queen Anne and village enclosures, hats, headpieces or fascinators are allowed. In terms of colours, Bayindir said designs in pale pink and blue were annual staples, with fuchsia, sage green and lilac also proving popular lately. As for size, the bigger the better. 'It doesn't matter who you are, you can be the star and take that chance and be outrageous," she said. "Royal Ascot itself has a very big personality. So you need to sort of support that big personality and be part of it if you want to be really enjoying the environment."
