Margot Robbie’s Met Gala 2026 Dress Took 761 Hours To Create | See Pics

When fashion’s biggest night rolls around, expectations are sky-highm and this year, one look quietly stole the spotlight for the sheer amount of work behind it. The 2026 Met Gala saw craftsmanship take centre stage, with one outfit in particular becoming a talking point even before the details were fully known.

Margot Robbie made her return to the Met Gala red carpet in a look that stayed true to her long-standing association with Chanel. The actor arrived in a strapless gold lamé gown, complete with a flowing train delicately lined with flower petal detailing. The piece stood out not just for its design but for the effort behind it—the Chanel atelier reportedly spent 761 hours creating the dress, incorporating around 1,100 individual embroidery

elements.

Her appearance also marked a return to the gala after a gap. Robbie was last seen at the event in 2023, during the “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty” theme, where she wore a vintage Chanel design originally created by Lagerfeld for the spring 1993 couture collection. This year’s outing also coincided with designer Matthieu Blazy stepping into the spotlight, as Robbie supported his debut for the fashion house at the gala.

Looking back, the actor’s Met Gala journey has seen a mix of bold and understated fashion moments. She first attended in 2014 for “Charles James: Beyond Fashion,” wearing a sheer, heavily embellished Prada gown. Two years later, at the 2016 edition themed “Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology,” she opted for a cleaner aesthetic in a white strapless Calvin Klein dress with cutout detailing at the waist.

The 2026 Met Gala, held on May 4 at Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, follows the theme “Costume Art,” aligning with the museum’s spring exhibition of the same name. The dress code, “Fashion Is Art,” encourages attendees to interpret clothing as a form of artistic expression, leading to a wide range of creative looks on the red carpet.

The annual fundraiser, staged on the first Monday of May, evolved into its current form under former Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland. She introduced the idea of themed galas in 1973, beginning with a tribute to designer Cristóbal Balenciaga. Before that, the museum had hosted Costume Institute events throughout the 1950s and 1960s without a central theme.

In the lead-up to this year’s event, Vogue announced that the exhibition “Costume Art” would also mark the opening of the Costume Institute’s first permanent galleries at the museum. The new Condé M. Nast Galleries, spanning nearly 12,000 square feet and located near the Great Hall, signal a major shift for the department.

“It will be transformative for our department, but I also think it’s going to be transformative to fashion more generally — the fact that an art museum like The Met is actually giving a central location to fashion,” said curator Andrew Bolton.

Bolton further explained that the exhibition explores “the centrality of the dressed body in the museum’s vast collection,” bringing together artworks across 5,000 years alongside historical and contemporary fashion pieces from the Costume Institute.