When Princess Diana climbed the steps of the Dior-themed Met Gala in 1996, she tugged at her silk negligée. It was the Princess’s first and only appearance at the ball, and John Galliano’s very first commission for the house since being promoted there from Givenchy just weeks before. But Diana, newly divorced and free to dress beyond royal protocols, had made one last-minute adjustment while getting ready at the nearby Carlyle Hotel. “I couldn’t believe it,” Galliano recalled in the 2024 documentary series In Vogue: The 90s. “She’d ripped the corset out.” The British press was aghast for different reasons: the mother of the future king was, as The Guardian put it, “wandering around the Costume Institute Ball… in her nightie”. It has since become one of the defining images of Diana’s post-palace autonomy. “She felt so liberated,” Galliano added. “The dress was much more sensuous.”

In time, the designer would go on to architect many more of the Met Gala’s most memorable arrivals, transforming pop stars, franchise actors and reality TV personalities into the kind of wretched beauties that stalked the runways of his namesake label, Givenchy, Dior and Maison Margiela. There was Rihanna, a co-chair of the 2018 “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” gala, who arrived in an ornate white Margiela corset dress with a matching jacket, beaded mitre and clutch, recalling Galliano’s autumn/winter 2000 Dior Haute Couture collection, which opened with a model dressed in jewel-encrusted vestments, wafting a thurible of incense over the audience. And Kim Kardashian at 2024’s “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion”, in a boiled-wool cardigan and corset of antique silver brocade, as organ-bruising as any worn in Galliano’s seminal spring/summer 2024 Maison Margiela Artisanal presentation, staged in an underpass beneath Paris’s Pont Alexandre III. It’s not beyond the realms to imagine that Kim, who resurrected one of Marilyn Monroe’s most iconic dresses in 2022, might return to this year’s Met Gala, devoted to John Galliano, wearing the same one he designed for Diana 30 years ago.

Princess Diana, 1996

December 1996’s Met Gala celebrated the 50th anniversary of the house of Christian Dior. Princess Diana wore a navy silk, negligée-inspired slip dress, paired with the Chouchou bag that would soon be renamed in her honour, offering a prelude to newly appointed creative director Galliano’s debut haute couture collection the following month.

Amber Valletta, 2004

At the 2004 “Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century” Met Gala, Amber Valletta wore a Marie Antoinette-inspired look comprising a Maggie Norris Couture corset and a voluminous John Galliano skirt.

Charlize Theron, 2006

Charlize Theron arrived at the 2006 “AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion” Met Gala alongside John Galliano, wearing a scarlet ballgown he had designed for the occasion. Galliano himself wore an embroidered tailcoat, polka-dot waistcoat, sequined trousers and a piled-high wig – just one example of his ever-shifting image. “Fashion is above all an art of change,” he once said, a philosophy he embodied whenever he took his bow at Dior shows with a new look.

Gisele Bündchen, 2006

Long before red-carpet vintage became de rigueur, Theron was joined on the Met steps by Gisele Bündchen, who wore a liquid-silk gown from John Galliano’s spring/summer 1997 Dior collection, featuring an embroidered bust and fringed train.

Jessica Stam, 2007

At the 2007 “Poiret: King of Fashion” Met Gala, model-of-the-moment Jessica Stam arrived in an Art Nouveau-inspired Christian Dior gown from John Galliano’s spring/summer 1998 collection. “Probably his most lavish spectacle ever for the house on its grand marble steps,” Vogue later wrote of the show. “With the Marchesa Casati for a muse, the clothes looked straight out of an early 20th-century salon.”

Cameron Diaz, 2007

Then along came Cameron Diaz in a lavishly ruffled fuchsia gown by John Galliano. “I remember I just loved the colour,” the actress recalled in her Life in Looks video, so much so that she “didn’t want to wear diamonds”.

The Olsens, 2015

While they have not been seen at the Met Gala since 2019, The Row co-founders are known to leave their looks until the last minute, instead shopping their own wardrobes for the event, as their hairstylist Mark Townsend revealed in 2020. For 2015’s “China: Through The Looking Glass”-themed fundraiser, the twins pulled out coordinating vintage looks from Galliano’s tenure at Dior.

Amal Clooney, 2015

It was first reported in 2015 that stylist Alexis Roche – Galliano’s longtime partner – had been responsible for a number of Amal Clooney’s red-carpet looks, including the Maison Margiela Artisanal gown she wore to that year’s Met Gala, featuring a Chinese military-inspired bodice and flounced skirt.

Katy Perry, 2017