Cardi B is among the most anticipated Met Gala arrivals every year, and tonight was no different. For the 2024 Met Gala, the star hit just as the carpet was closing in a show stopping, huge look (no, literally, huge).
Cardi B was enveloped in a puddle of black tulle, courtesy of a Windowsen ball gown with a train that took up about half of the iconic staircase and needed five assistants to unravel its contents.
The rapper paired the gown with a matching black tulle turban, with her long black hair cascading from underneath. She accessorized with bold diamond and emerald jewelry and her sharp green claw nails.
Cardi's over-the-top number brings together some of the best elements from her previous Met Gala looks. Last year, to fit the “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty" theme, one of Cardi's two dresses had a full black ball gown skirt covered in huge sculptural rosettes. Back in 2019, for "Notes on Camp," Cardi took the stairs in a custom oxblood Thom Browne gown that extended outward in concentric circles for about ten feet, made from tulle and silk organza and filled with down.
This year, Cardi's lush tulle speaks to the 2024 Met Gala dress code, “The Garden of Time,” a concept inspired by J.G. Ballard's 1962 short story of the same name. This theme focuses on the connection between time and natural beauty for the Met's "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" exhibit, which will include “250 objects spanning four centuries...visually united by iconography related to nature, which will serve as a metaphor for the fragility and ephemerality of fashion,” per a press release.
The Grammy Award-winning rapper and her stylist Kollin Carter have been preparing this look for months. “We’re always thinking ahead,” Cardi told The Hollywood Reporter in late March. “I feel like the Met Gala is almost like going to the Grammys. It’s very nerve-racking, and even though we make it look so easy, we really be so nervous.”
“We always try to make sure that everything goes right, that everything be iconic. We want everything to be iconic. I know people sometimes be like, ‘Oh, it’s not about who is there and who is not,’ but it’s like, no, you need to remember us forever," Cardi continued. It's safe to say they accomplished their goal.
