During the 2024 Met Gala red carpet, Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour surprised fashion fans when she walked the red carpet in a custom version of a Loewe Fall/winter 2024 ensemble that consisted of a fitted long-sleeve white gown and dramatic floral coat adored with flowers. The surprising part wasn’t that she chose a coat, but that it was black.
Wintour, 74, has famously shared some of her cardinal style rules publicly, including her thoughts on wearing what’s arguably fashion’s most beloved—or at least most relied-upon—shade. In a 2019 video for Vogue‘s Go Ask Anna series, Wintour was asked how best to spice up an all-black outfit. Her reply? “Don’t wear all black. It seems too gloomy as if one’s going to a funeral.”
The Met Gala is, obviously, the farthest thing from a funeral so maybe Wintour had a change of heart, or maybe something about the coat spoke to the event’s theme, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” and its official dress code, The Garden of Time.
The black Loewe coat was inspired by a cape designed by Charles Frederick Worth, an English fashion designer who founded the House of Worth, one of the foremost fashion houses of the 19th and early 20th centuries and is widely considered to be the father of haute couture, according to fashion historians.
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In addition to Wintour, this year’s celebrity cochairs are multihyphenate Jennifer Lopez, actor Zendaya, musician Bad Bunny, and actor Chris Hemsworth.
It should be noted that this isn’t the time Anna Wintour has doubled back on her viral fashion rule: She wore a vintage black Chanel gown to the 2022 state dinner at the White House, which honored French president Emmanuel Macron. Granted, the 1983 long-sleeve dress was decked out with attached Chanel’s signature jewels, strands of pearls, and other adornments but fashion followers were quick to notice the dress was, in essence, all black.
