Teyana Taylor’s Chiseled Hips Made a Personal Style Statement at the Met Gala

When I walk into Teyana Taylor’s hotel room at The Pierre an hour before she was set to walk the Met Gala red carpet, two makeup artists are applying concealer to her hip bones with small feathery brushes. Of course, I had not yet seen the parade of celebrities walk the red carpet, but I knew instinctively she’d be the only one undergoing this process. Everyone predicted most of the guests would opt for simple, subtle, safe elegance pulled from the Chanel archives (and they did), but Teyana Taylor wanted her hips out.

Taylor worked with Thom Browne on a custom tweed gown with large cut-outs at her chiseled hips for the Karl Lagerfeld-themed evening. When I ask about how she felt when Browne invited her, she leans forward and grabs my shoulder: “I thought, Yeah—we are going to take it there!” The coarseness of the tweed from her gloved sleeve brushes against my skin and I can’t help but stare at hers, now shimmering with every stroke of her makeup artist’s brush. Of course, Teyana Taylor would quite literally body her Met Gala look. While her abs are the topic of much internet discussion (mostly, people begging for her workout routine), the way she accentuates them is a core tentpole of her personal style. Whereas some celebrities expose skin strategically to zhuzh up a look, Taylor oozes sensuality in a way that feels natural.

To start the design process, Taylor says, she and Browne asked themselves, “How can we be Karl but with our imagination? How do we merge all this greatness?” Browne wanted to make sure he was creating an ode to Taylor as well as Lagerfeld. “He really thought about me in the midst of all that. Like yes, it is Karl and yes, it is Thom, but it is also T! It is also me!”

At the Met Gala, guests tend to look dressed up rather than dressed. They eschew personal style for either shock factor or rule following. Rarely does a look feel personalized and also remarkable. When it does, it’s transcendent. Taylor’s Browne look was easily one of those moments. “I just have an emotional connection with Thom because I feel like he speaks for all the creatives that feel and think outside the box, that feel other. He is other and I am other and it is a fire-ass combo! I will say that.”

People often say Browne speaks to the fashion misfit in all of us. His designs are works of theater; even his buttoned-up suits give people a sense of childlike exuberance. At this year’s Met Gala, his guests were many of the night’s best-dressed. When Taylor tries to describe them all, she lands on the word “thoughtful.” Every one of Browne’s Met Gala looks last night included an obvious call back to Lagerfeld’s design heritage—tweed, suiting, ties. But Lagerfeld made fabulous status symbols worn by supermodels. Browne’s designs are fabulous otherworldly works that champion individualism. You don’t have to mold yourself to them; they mold accordingly for you.

“I remember before he even invited me, I was at his latest show. And I was talking to him about his imagination and how I could relate. We both kind of shed a little thug tear! I consider myself to be different and when he invited me, it was a full-circle moment,” Taylor tells me before laughing. “When I saw the design, I was gagging.” She smirks before grabbing her tie off the bed. “Look at this! Sagittarius energy!”

She points at the golden embroidery of her zodiac sign at the center, her eyes wide. Her entourage, sitting on the hotel's window, quietly engrossed in the makeup process this entire time, erupt into laughter. Her grandmother, seated in a small chair off to the corner taking on a phone call in her own headphones as if none of us were present, jerks upright at the sound before they all say, “There she goes!” Taylor leans forward and laughs. “I manifested this!”

Taylor is one of the only people who attended last night's gala who doesn't have a stylist. “For a long time it was like, 'Well, you have to have a stylist to be in this place or that place or build this.’ And it made me want to go harder and build these relationships with designers and I did that!" Which makes her Met Gala look feel like even more of a triumph. "I showed up for Thom every time and he knew me. We did this shit together!”

Tara Gonzalez

Tara Gonzalez is the Senior Fashion Editor at Harper’s Bazaar. Previously, she was the style writer at InStyle, founding commerce editor at Glamour, and fashion editor at Coveteur.