The Most Entertaining Met Gala Looks Never Hit the Red Carpet

Liana Satenstein

May 2, 2023 at 2:31 PM·14 min read

The most entertaining red-carpet looks of the Met Gala 2023 came from Vaquera. Designers Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee of the independent New York-based label styled September Evans in a dress with an inflatable skirt and pillow-like contraptions at the head; devised a custom plastic dress complete with an elegant hood for Anita Kristiansen; and for Anita Li, crafted a dress made up of balled-up trash bags. Finally Carrie Marie Carey, their last starlet of the night, donned a thrashed dress that appeared to be covered in mud. One comment from a user simply read: “Incredible.”

But you wouldn’t have seen these outré looks hit the red carpet because they never existed in the first place. Instead these entertaining paparazzi moments were generated by the AI program Midjourney; the tool, which uses text prompts to create realistic images, was also responsible for the viral (fake) images of the Pope wearing a floor-length white fashion-bro puffer coat. It took the designers roughly a day to create the bulk of the Vaquera looks, with some varying wait times. (DiCaprio created Evans’s look a few weeks ago.) “You just have to try some phrases out,” DiCaprio tells Vogue over the phone. “Sometimes it makes an amazing one immediately, and then you strike out and it takes hours.”

But don’t ask DiCaprio or Taubensee what the inspiration for each one was. “It is kind of secretive. That is the art of Midjourney,” says DiCaprio. “We keep what we put in a secret, which sounds tacky, but a photographer doesn’t reveal his lighting.”

Whatever the terms DiCaprio or Taubensee entered into the AI program, Vaquera’s Met Gala outings ultimately hinged on both protest and fantasy. While DiCaprio acknowledges that the dresses “never would have gotten approved at The Met,” through AI their team was able to think beyond practical restrictions. “It is cool to imagine things that would be impossible to make, especially for a small brand like ours with limited funding,” says DiCaprio.

Vaquera’s latest project is also a comment on the nature of celebrity. None of their attendees were real people, but setting aside a warped hand or two, they could have passed as some actor, influencer, or model. At some point, famous faces all begin to blend together. “We aren’t a celebrity-focused brand—that isn’t something that we are super inspired by—so it was funny to just create a vague person,” says DiCaprio. “To look like a celebrity is good enough. Everyone was still into it, even if they didn’t know who they were.”

There is a slightly sinister humor that comes with using AI and pulling a fast one on unwitting observers. At first many of Vaquera’s fans seemed to genuinely applaud the brand’s Met Gala gowns. Even DiCaprio’s own stepmother congratulated him. “I’m sure my mother will be writing any time now, saying, ‘So beautiful,’” he says. Yet this isn’t the first time that Vaquera has dipped a toe into AI—and its previous experiment actually tricked a follower: A few months ago, the brand released a line of AI-generated children’s clothes that immediately garnered the interest of an online retailer that asked to buy the pieces.

Jokes aside, advances in AI have led to serious man-versus-machine conversations about whether technology will eventually threaten the job security of humans, especially in creative industries. Yet Vaquera uses AI as a guide—and sometimes even as direct inspiration. “We are so inspired in the studio, and we just sit around the computer and make [AI images] and laugh,” says DiCaprio. Whatever the designers are laughing at may very well end up on the runway in some form. “We put them on the mood board for the season and let it inspire us and push us to make things that AI couldn’t make,” he says. “It can’t make everything, and I think using it as a tool is a cool thing.”

DiCaprio also defends Vaquera’s use of AI by comparing the brand’s fake creations to the looks that appeared on the real-life Met Gala carpet. “This is the most AI Met Gala I’ve ever seen. Like Jared Leto dressed as a cat? I thought that that was fake,” he says. “And Doja Cat too!”

But as DiCaprio noted, AI can’t create everything. Vaquera dreamt up their celebrity-sounding names themselves but mistakenly christened two stars with the same first name. “I didn’t realize there were two Anitas,” says DiCaprio. But after all, there is art in human error.

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