8 Met Gala Looks as Gilded Age Buildings

Ivy Getty as the Frick Collection in New York City

Today, Fifth Avenue’s Frick Collection represents one of America’s finest house museums. It was originally built in 1913-14 by the firm Carrère and Hastings for Henry Clay Frick, one of the country’s most successful industrialists and art patrons. Of the numerous expansions and changes the residence underwent, one of its most charming additions was the idyllic Garden Court, designed by John Russell Pope for the museum’s opening in 1935. Ivy Getty, a descendent of another legendary American family—that of J. Paul Getty—wore an Oscar de la Renta gown comprised of a Lyon lace tablecloth, borrowed from the Getty estate. 

La La Anthony as Rosecliff Mansion in Newport, Rhode Island

For her 2022 Met Gala look, Vogue live stream co-host La La Anthony opted for a maroon satin gown by LaQuan Smith and dramatic metal fascinator by Laurel DeWitt. Although Anthony and the designers did not cite Newport’s Rosecliff Mansion as inspiration, the property’s romantic heart-shaped staircase, with its undulating, architectural curves and ironwork immediately comes to mind. Not only does the shape echo that of Anthony’s bedazzled bodice, but the gown’s train could easily be imagined trailing down the “sweetheart’s staircase,” as it was known, to make a proper grand entrance, just as architect Stanford White had intended.

Adut Akech as Château-sur-Mer in Newport, Rhode Island

One of the earliest Newport mansions that still stands today is Chateau-sur-Mer, completed in 1852, decades before the famed Vanderbilt houses. As a landmark of High Victorian architecture, it was originally built as an Italianate-style villa for China trade merchant William Shepard Wetmore. After he died in 1862, his son George Peabody Wetmore had Richard Morris Hunt remodel and redecorate the house in the Second Empire French style during the 1870s. South Sudanese-Australian model Adut Akech’s Christian Lacroix fall 2003 Haute Couture gown recalls the equally one-of-a-kind central staircase at Chateau-sur-Mer. 

Cara Delevingne as The Morgan Library in New York City

Although it is one of the night’s most daring looks, we cannot help but draw similarities, if only for their distinct warm-toned color scheme, between Cara Delevingne’s ensemble and the Morgan Library and Museum. While walking the red carpet, the model and actress removed her Christian Dior double-breasted jacket to reveal her gold-painted chest, further adorned with gold jewelry. The radiant, intrepid combination parallels the three-story bronze and walnut bookshelves and luminous ceiling of the Morgan Library, originally built between 1902 and 1906 as the personal library of financier, collector, and philanthropist Pierpont Morgan. Designed by Charles McKim of the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, the library housed Morgan’s illuminated and historical books and manuscripts, as well as numerous artworks.

Sarah Jessica Parker as the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina

It would only be fitting that the Met Gala red carpet’s reigning queen, Sarah Jessica Parker, would sartorially align with “America’s chateau,” the Biltmore in Asheville, North Carolina. Designed by Christopher John Rodgers, her voluminous gown was inspired by an 1860s dress made by designer and activist Elizabeth Keckly, who although enslaved, used her dressmaking talent to garner clients as elite as First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. Keckly’s role as a pioneer of American fashion is one of the untold stories highlighted in “In America: An Anthology of Fashion,” which also addresses the country’s troubling history. Parker’s dress evokes the sophisticated color palette and contours of the Biltmore, whose construction began in 1889 and took six years to complete. George Vanderbilt enlisted Richard Morris Hunt and Frederick Law Olmsted to bring his 16^th– and 17^th-century French chateau vision to life.