It should cost a billion to look as good as Beyoncé does in her return to the Met Gala, after a decade away from fashion’s biggest night.
The arrival of the record-breaking Grammy winner, 44, was among Monday night’s most highly anticipated, both due to her long-held absence from Anna Wintour’s annual celebration of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute exhibition — this year’s theme being “Costume Art” — and because Beyoncé is a co-chair.
The “Irreplaceable” superstar, who boasts 35 Grammys, posed alongside eldest daughter Blue Ivy and husband Jay-Z on the red carpet, wearing an Olivier Rousteing rhinestone gown made to look like a skeleton and an ombre feather cape.
The Andrew Bolton-curated exhibit deals in a “series of thematic body types” as it delves into “the relationship between clothing and the body beneath … and [will] feature both historical and contemporary pieces from the Costume Institute,” and per Vogue.
“It feels surreal [to be back] because my daughter’s here,” Beyoncé told La La Anthony of the 14-year-old. “I think she looks so incredible.”
Beyoncé debuted at the Met Gala wearing Armani Privé for 2008’s “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy,” and last attended the Met Ball in 2016, when the theme was “Manus x Machina: Fashion In An Age Of Technology,” for which she wore Givenchy Haute Couture. She also wore Givenchy Haute Couture the year prior for “China: Through the Looking Glass,” with a wholly sheer number proving her most notable to that point.
But it was the afterparty for the 2014 Met Gala that remains the most infamous. That was the year Beyoncé was forced to play referee between husband Jay-Z and younger sister Solange, who started shouting at, hitting and kicking at the hip-hop billionaire.
The incident was later referenced in a lyric on a remix of her song “Flawless” released later that year.
Her attendance this year is the first since she won the coveted Album of the Year Grammy in 2025, for 2024’s hit country album, “Cowboy Carter” — the tour for which became the genre’s biggest.
Beyoncé is co-chairing this year’s Met Gala alongside Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and former Vogue editor-in-chief Wintour, who in 2025 passed the torch to Vogue.com editor Chloe Malle.