Katy Perry’s bizarre faceless look at the Met Gala has been explained
Some of the best looking people in the world gathered together last night to walk the red carpet at the 2026 Met Gala.
Celebrities including Bad Bunny, Sabrina Carpenter and Beyonce all showed up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Monday evening (4 May), with all attendees celebrating fashion and art with their high brow outfits.
It's tradition that we see some wild outfits on the red carpet and last night was no different, with Heidi Klum once again stealing the show with her living statue outfit, with the Queen of Halloween never one to shy away from bizarre costumes.
But it was Katy Perry's outfit who left a lot of people confused, with the I Kissed A Girl singer somehow tricking a lot of viewers into believing that an artificial intelligence robot had snagged an invite to the illustrious event.
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She showed up alongside Heated Rivalry actor Connor Storrie and donned a futuristic mask to go with her Stella McCartney dress, in a look which some are calling astro-chic, which seems appropriate given that she's one of the few attendees who can claim to have actually gone to space.
Perry was fully committed to the bit, given that the gloves she was wearing even had six fingers, which is undoubtedly in reference to AI regularly generating images of people with more, or fewer fingers than normal.
The 41-year-old also reportedly worked with an artist to generate images of her on the red carpet before she'd even arrived at the event, while she only opened her mask and revealed her true identity after pulling out a magician tarot card.
According to a press release, the mask was 'designed to be a literal and symbolic reflection that invites the observer to consider that their perception of others can mirror their own internal world, and conversely mask truth', which suggests that there was actually quite a deep meaning to her outfit choice at last night's event.
The hidden meanings didn't stop there either, as the burned look at the end of her glamorous dress seems to be a reference to her upcoming release 'Let it Burn', rather than the 2010 hit 'Firework'.
Met Gala 2026 theme explained
We’ve seen some truly bonkers Met Gala looks in the past, but the celebs who attend are actually given a dress code, as well as an invitation to tailor their outfits to the event’s theme.
The Met Gala doubles as a launch event for the Costume Institute's spring exhibition, and the theme is generally aligned with that, along with a slightly more open-to-interpretation dress code.
This year’s theme is ‘Costume Art’, to tie in with a Costume Institute exhibition, which pairs paintings and sculptures with historical and contemporary clothes.
It looks to deal with ‘the centrality of the dressed body in the museum’s vast collection’.
The dress code is a bit more vague: Fashion is Art.
To me, that is even more anxiety-inducing than ‘smart-casual’. British Vogue says the dress code ‘encourages attendees to consider the many ways that designers use the body as their blank canvas’.
Previous themes and dress code have included:
2025
Theme: Superfine: Tailoring Black Style
Dress code: Tailored for You
2024
Theme: Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion
Dress code: The Garden of Time
2023
Theme: Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty
Dress code: In honour of Karl
Topics: Met Gala, Fashion, Katy Perry, Heidi Klum, AI
James Moorhouse