However much work you thought Kim Kardashian was doing to stay upright and camera-ready in her stunning silver Maison Margiela Artisanal by John Galliano ensemble at the Met Gala 2024 on Monday, it was even more difficult than that.
A new Vogue video tracking Kardashian as she tests her hair and makeup and tries on the look days before the event reveals how she managed to breathe in that impossibly wasp-waisted corset. Seen taking careful sips of air through her pursed lips as the video begins, Kardashian is asked how the “breathing is going.”
“It’s an art form, but I got it,” she replies.
This is Kardashian’s 11th Met Gala appearance (she cooly adds as an aside that at her first one, she was “a plus-one,” omitting ex-husband Kanye West’s name), and she’s worn a different designer every time. She said that she pursued John Galliano specifically for a collaboration, clarifying that what she really meant was that it had been “four or five years of me stalking him to see if he would ever design a look for me for the Met.”
That persistence paid off, with Kardashian making headlines for her icy look for the “Garden of Time” dress code celebrating the “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” exhibit. She wore a corset rewoven from antique silver brocade that had fashion enthusiasts wondering where her internal organs were hiding, along with an overskirt of retooled silver, mirror fragments, crystals, chains, and more, all topped off with a thistle-washed cashmere cardigan to invoke waking up in a garden after “literally the best night of your life,” she said.
“I’m just running, my dress is falling off because it was one of those nights, and I grab my boyfriend’s sweater to run off to make it to where I have to be,” she said. “It’s like really the real-life me, where I have to make it home by 6 a.m. to get to carpool, real life happens, and sometimes I’m in my makeup from the night before and it is what it is.”
In her vision, she kept the corset on the whole time she spent the night with her imagined “most magical person.”
“It makes my boobs look so good, and my waist,” she said, eyes on her reflection. “So everything else came off.”
“I feel so snatched I can’t even begin to communicate to you how snatched I feel,” she told Galliano, fussing over Kardashian’s outfit while she practiced that “art form” breathing.
An easily overlooked component of the outfit, which underlines the duo’s commitment to the bit: A custom Margiela thong in the same silvery brocade, erasing any chance of an accidental slip-up through the open-weave overskirt.
Kardashian’s unusual gait on the Met’s green carpet was also explained by the video: The star appeared to be working hard to move around, but it wasn’t just due to her tightly fitted, elaborate outfit. Both to avoid a spike heel catching in one of the skirt’s openings and to sidestep a distracting footwear choice, Kardashian wore a pair of heel-less Pleaser heels, balancing on her tiptoes atop a towering clear platform under the ball of her foot. Kardashian stands at around 5’2” flat-footed and in the video, she estimates that in the precarious heels, she’s just under 6 feet tall. She was actually standing on her tiptoes, calves flexed and unable to lean backwards, the entire night.
“I think ballerinas do it and they have a lot of practice. This is our only practice, but we’ll do it,” she said gamely.
Relive all the looks, the best-dressed guests, see who won the evening’s theme, and catch up on all the details from fashion’s biggest night with Vanity Fair’s coverage of the Met Gala 2024.
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