Vogue’s First Friday Met Gala Pre-Party at Madame Tussauds was as Surreal as it was Stylish

Reported by Vogue.

The Met Gala weekend has an unofficial opening act, and it doesn't happen on the steps of the Met. Vogue's First Friday party — this year staged inside Madame Tussauds in Times Square — set the tone for fashion's biggest weekend with equal parts glamour and genuine absurdity. Fans lined 42nd Street outside, unsure exactly who they were waiting for. Inside, the wax figure of a silver-crowned Beyoncé answered that question before any real celebrity could.

Hosted by Chloe Malle, Teyana Taylor, and Simone Ashley, the cocktail party drew designers, models, editors, and photographers into one of New York's most kitsch tourist landmarks — many for the first time. "I've definitely never been here — I mean, have any of us," Michael Kors reportedly deadpanned in the elevator, according to Vogue. Baz Luhrmann photographed a friend beside a wax Leonardo DiCaprio. Gabbriette and Sombr posed under a Timothée Chalamet lookalike's umbrella. Paloma Elsesser made a beeline for the Mariah Carey figure. Meanwhile, silicone Rihanna and Kim Kardashian stood frozen in their own iconic Met looks, presiding over the whole thing like patron saints of the night.

Dressed to the Theme

The dress code — Bodies, Bodies, Bodies — nodded to the Costume Institute's upcoming exhibition on how fashion shapes and interprets the human form. Nina Dobrev worked a fishnet knit Gabriela Hearst. Malle corseted up in McQueen. Irina Shayk went sculptural in Issey Miyake, and Georgina Rodriguez wore a bondage-inflected Ludovic de Saint Sernin that had, in a full-circle moment, been walked on the runway by Elsesser herself. Elsesser, for her part, pulled a look from Comme des Garçons Spring 1997 — the legendary "lumps and bumps" Body Meets Dress collection — straight from her own closet. "I just had this; I didn't even need to find anything," she said. Sarah Hoover, in Tanner Fletcher, joked she needed three Ubers before her hoop-skirted gown could fit inside one.

The party extended beyond fashion cosplay. Cocktails called the Waisted Cosmo and Body Electric kept the theme intact at the bar, while Goop Kitchen food — timely, given the brand's first New York outpost opening — circulated on trays. A Google-powered AI activation on the seventh floor let guests virtually try on archival couture, which is either thrilling or deeply unsettling depending on your relationship with technology. As the night wound down, karaoke rumors surfaced. This is Times Square, after all.

When fashion's most theatrical weekend needs a proper warm-up, apparently all it takes is wax celebrities, corsetry, and AI-generated couture in a tourist trap — and somehow, it works.

Read the original at Vogue.