Riley Keough, fresh off her film debut in the Joan Jett biopic The Runaways, attended the Met Gala for the first time in 2010. Now, nearly 15 years later, as she prepares for the Met Gala 2024, the Emmy nominee is far more calm about fashion’s biggest night. “I definitely am more relaxed at the Met Ball than I was when I was 20 years old,” she tells Vanity Fair. “I think that’s just in general, I’m not as nervous. It’s not as overwhelming…but I still treat every time like it’s the first because it’s a special event, even though I’ve been six or seven times.”
This year, the Chanel ambassador interpreted the “Garden of Time” theme as “elegant, classic, and graceful,” and embodied those attributes in a custom look from the French fashion house. A floor-length dress with a black silk tulle top, fully embroidered with sequins, created a gray background that imitates tweed and camellias in shades of blue, pink, and black. The sheer midriff area was accentuated by a belted black chiffon skirt, which Keough referred to as “gothic” and “beautiful.”
It was a fitting for another major soiree that encouraged Keough to adapt a look from the Chanel haute couture spring-summer 2022 collection for the Met. “There was a dress I tried on for the Emmys that inspired the idea,” the Daisy Jones & the Six star tells VF. Keough worked closely with Virginie Viard, creative director of Chanel, to craft an “effortless” look. “I’m so inspired by Virginie—she’s so bold, kind, and just an incredible artist and visionary,” says Keough. “Whatever her vision is, I just want to support that. I am not a clothing designer. So I really leave room for Chanel to be Chanel.”
Part of that ethos has meant embracing the largely female design team. “At Chanel, it’s primarily loads of women…who are kind and creative and wonderful,” says Keough. “Being a part of the house and able to watch these things come to life and get an inside view of the way that Chanel exists has been super inspiring.” The making of her 2024 Met Gala gown required 1,174 hours of craftsmanship and contained about 200,000 embroidered elements. “Every piece feels so special when you’ve seen sketches and watched things being made. The artistry is incredible,” says Keough. “Virginie also really understands who I am and what I like…They dress you in things that are you.”
Given the detailed, high-neck embroidery of her dress, Keough gravitated towards a simpler aesthetic for her Chanel accessories and makeup. “If I could wear no makeup on a carpet—just a little lipstick, blush, and mascara—I would be in heaven,” she says. “I love all the cool things that can be done with makeup, but I like looking natural. I’m not someone that is attracted to crazy makeup looks.” That philosophy also extends to the feel of her gown. “I love to be comfortable,” Keough insists. “To be honest, the best Met year, I was wearing sneakers.” That would be 2019’s camp-themed gala, where Keough wore Louis Vuitton. “It is a night where sometimes you have to do the carpet holding your breath and in pain, and then you get inside and unzip,” she says. “It’s such a wild night and so many of the outfits have crazy structures and wildly uncomfortable situations,” but this time, “my dress is not that.”
Once inside, Keough looked forward to reconnecting with friends and former colleagues. “There was a year that Kristen Stewart and I got ready together,” she recalls, “that was particularly memorable because I was in my 20s and we had a really fun time getting ready, and then went to the after parties together.” This year, Keough relished the opportunity to mingle with Lily Gladstone, her costar in the Hulu limited series Under the Bridge, an adaptation of the late Rebecca Godfrey’s true crime book. “What she does for Indigenous designers has been so inspiring,” Keough says of Gladstone before teasing “a very epic version” of that in her black cape dress by Gabriela Hearst and the Kiowa jeweler Keri Ataumbi.
I ask Keough if she’s aware of the impassioned fan response to her onscreen chemistry with Gladstone. “I see a little bit of it because I follow the Under the Bridge official account, and they repost a lot of this stuff,” she says with a laugh. “So I see that people are liking the Lily and Riley relationship, which is great.” As for the rest of the season, which airs through the end of the month, “I can say the last two [episodes] are very, very good—very intense,” says Keough. “So definitely hang in there because it gets a little wild at the end. It’s very emotional.”
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