“It’s really about making Shakira feel like the best version of Shakira,” Carolina Herrera creative director Wes Gordon says about the 2024 Met Gala look he designed for the mononymous pop legend.
Over the past few months, the two were in constant discussion on how, exactly, to make that happen. After countless amount of emails, phone calls, and visits to her home in Miami, they settled on a concept: a sleek, scarlet red column dress with geometric cutouts and a cape that used just under 100 meters of fabric to make.
The cutouts, says Gordon, are what really makes Shakira’s dress, well, Shakira’s. Watch any of her music videos, from “Hips Don’t Lie” to “Whenever, Wherever,” and the singer is usually in a midriff-baring, low-rise outfit. It’s a fashion choice that befits herself and her audience—by strategically showing elements of her body, we’re able to better see the intricacies of her (incredible) dance moves. “She was incredibly focused on the tiny details of the cutouts—where things are hitting, as well as the neckline,” says Gordon. “It’s amazing to work and do fittings with someone who’s a physical performer, because her sensitivity to movement and body awareness is really extraordinary.”
Gordon, who has dressed Met Gala attendees from Karlie Kloss to Adut Akech, also wanted to make sure Shakira made a fashion statement on a night full of fashion statements—especially since it was her first time attending. So his atelier created a cape complete with drapery that resembles a rose that hangs over her petite shoulders. (The flower was an apt motif: not only is it a house code of Carolina Herrera, but a Philip Treacy 2000 rose hat featured in the “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” exhibit is an emblem of this year’s Met Gala.) One of Gordon’s pattern makers studied sculpture, adding an artistic element to the design.
“The line I always try to walk at Herrera is between modern and clean, and dramatic and glamorous. I think this piece does that with the dress and then the cape,” he adds. And, going by the noise that crowd made when they saw Shakira exit her car for the 2024 Met Gala, they both hit the right notes.
