Met Gala After-Parties Kept the Art Going

From The Mark to Greenwich Village

Several guests who prepared at The Mark Hotel, including Hudson Williams, Cardi B and Ashley Graham, got a practical send-off before party-hopping. In the hotel lobby, The Mark Haute Dog Cart by KFC served chicken tenders and French fries, which is about as close as Met Gala night gets to a public service.

From there, many attendees headed downtown to Saint Laurent’s post-Met celebration at People’s bar in Greenwich Village, where the night stretched into the early morning.

The Theme Did Not Clock Out

This year’s Met Gala theme, “Costume Art,” came with the dress code “Fashion Is Art,” and plenty of guests kept working that brief after the red carpet.

Ashley Graham changed out of the nude-toned DiPetsa gown she wore to the Gala and into a Jean Paul Gaultier SS99 dress printed with statue imagery for the after-party circuit.

Hunter Schafer also moved into a second look. After wearing a custom Prada design inspired by Gustav Klimt’s 1912/1913 painting Mäda Primavesi, she switched into a shorter, sleeker Steve O. Smith dress for the Saint Laurent event.

The after-parties also drew names who were not part of the official Gala guest list, including Olivia Rodrigo, who arrived fresh from her Saturday Night Live hosting gig.

Inside the Gala: Co-Chairs and Plus Ones

Earlier in the evening, co-chairs Beyoncé, Venus Williams and Nicole Kidman helped anchor the main event inside the Met.

Venus attended with her husband, Andrea Preti. Nicole and Beyoncé both brought family along: Nicole was joined by Sunday Rose, her 17-year-old daughter with ex-husband Keith Urban, while Beyoncé attended with husband Jay-Z and their 14-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy.

Those appearances came with a small rules wrinkle. Met Gala guests are generally expected to be 18, but Anna Wintour appeared willing to allow exceptions for the daughters of two co-chairs. Given the event’s long history of unofficial rule-bending, including the annual forbidden selfie, this was not exactly a constitutional crisis.

Nicole Kidman’s Long View on Fashion

For Nicole, 58, fashion has a personal history as well as a public one. Her grandmother and mother were both accomplished seamstresses and often made clothes for her, giving her an early understanding of how clothing can function beyond decoration.

“Sometimes it’s armor,” Kidman told Vogue in 2025. “Sometimes it’s playful, sometimes it’s sexy. It just depends on my mood. Sometimes it’s androgynous, sometimes it’s kind of, screw you.”

She described fashion as “a parallel artistic life,” a phrase that fit neatly with a Met Gala night built around the idea that clothes can carry the weight of art, performance and personal history.