Luminous dresses, 3D printing outfits and accessories, Blinking eye dress… the Met ball red carpet was packed with fashion tech, this Monday. Let’s have a look with Katy Perry, Zendaya Coleman, Nina Dobrev, Katie Holmes or Janelle Monáe. And, last but not least, let’s make a flashback at 2016 and 2010 editions.  

By Ludmilla Intravaia

The Met ball, the evening gala of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York, has become with time a must-attend event, a gathering place for all the fashionable extravagances of the moment, a bling bling statement for all fashionistas eager to (really) shine under the spotlights. No wonder that one will see luminous dresses on the red carpet, in the purest fashion tech tradition, fond of LEDs, lasers and other optical fibers.

This Monday, May 6 was no exception, especially with Tommy Hilfiger’s luminous dress, worn by American actress Zendaya Coleman, a tribute to Walt Disney’s movie Cinderella, from 1950.

Accustomed to bright outfits (read the Boudoir Numérique’s following article “Fashion tech Christmas”), American singer Katy Perry stood out, as a candlestick, in her Moshino’s silhouette. 

In 2010 Met Gala edition, Katy Perry chose to make a sparkling appearance in a bright gown enlighted by 3000 LED of the British brand CuteCircuit. “I chose this dress because balls tend to be very stuffy, and I like to lighten things up”, the star whispered in confidence to People Magazine that evening, teasingly admitting the dress control device nested in her cleavage.

3D printing was not left out, the Bulgarian-Canadian actress Nina Dobrev having opted for a strapless dress, custom-made by the designer Zac Posen, in collaboration with GE Additive, the additive manufacturing subsidiary from American firm General Electric. The four panels composing the dress were made in Germany, by the 3D printing company Protolabs, reported Monday E! News website, to which Nina Dobrev explained : "It's designed by a man but made by technology, by a robot essentially."

British model Jourdan Dunn wore a flower-shaped dress, a rose, which petals were made by the same team and the same additive manufacturing process than Nina Dobrev’s silhouette.

Cufflinks, brooches, embroideries and headpieces ... Zac Posen imagined lots of accessories in 3D printing for this 2019 edition of Met Ball, like this palm leaf collar worn by the American actress Katie Holmes.

Janelle Monáe’s dress, signed by American designer Christian Siriano, was the result of the collaboration between the American singer’s stylist, Alexandra Mandelkorn and a high-tech society. The neckline showed a mobile eye, blinking in a random sequence. "So this dress really does have a mind of her own", Alexandra Mandelkorn told The Hollywood Reporter, at the party.

Already, in 2016, the Gala was inspired by fashion tech, with the launch of the exhibition supported by Apple at the Met, Manus x Machina : Fashion in an age of Technology. On this occasion, the celebrities paid tribute to fashion technology by wearing outfits on this theme. This was the case of the American actress Claire Danes with a luminous dress by Zac Posen.

The Czech model and actress Karolina Kurkova also wore a luminous silhouette, imagined by Marchesa, in association with IBM. Using the firm's super computer Watson, the dress was equipped with color-changing LEDs, based on tweets posted about the Met Ball on the internet. A "sensitive" dress, in a way, illustrating emotional technology, one of the recurrent exploration fields of fashion technology.