Some 72 hours ago, Ambika Mod was, in her words, “shitting bricks.” She was still in the UK at the time, chatting to Vogue over Zoom ahead of a flight to New York to attend her first Met Gala on the invitation of Loewe creative director (and One Day super fan), Jonathan Anderson. “It’s all just very, very surreal,” Hertfordshire-born Mod said of joining the likes of Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, and Rihanna on the most high-profile red carpet of the year. “The Met Gala always felt really otherworldly to me… it still feels really bizarre that I’m going. I will be gaping at everyone from afar.”
It’s the sort of self-effacing take on the whole experience that Emma Morley–her character in Netflix’s highly binge-able adaptation of David Nicholls’s bestseller One Day–might come out with, but as she took up her spot on the red carpet at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art wearing custom Loewe, Mod looked right at home among the A-list. Her ostensibly simple white silk dress makes use of the Spanish house’s trademark trompe l'oeil technique: closer inspection reveals a 3-D digital print of another dress, the 1951 “Petal” ball gown by the influential mid-century designer Charles James, which has a petal-shaped waist detail and a flower-like petticoat.
Mod said she fell instantly for Anderson’s unique take on the theme of the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” which spotlights historic garments too fragile to be worn again, and the gala dress code (“The Garden of Time”), inspired by JG Ballard’s dystopian tale of a count and his wife plucking crystal flowers from their spectacular garden in an effort to slow down time–and stave off the arrival of an advancing horde.
“We thought it was more interesting to play on the end of the story,” said Mod, who explained that the muted shades of her “dramatic and poetic” Loewe look nod to the garden once all of its color has seeped away, and the mansion’s occupants have turned to stone. The 3-D print, meanwhile, is an apt way to celebrate an exhibit that utilises futuristic techniques to revive precious and fragile old pieces. “Me and my stylist Farrah [O’Connor], we loved that it was a fusion of period and modern,” Mod said. “It’s a dress displaying a dress in a way.” Plus: “It’s really, really cool.”
In the safe hands of Anderson–who also invited Mod to his Loewe autumn/winter 2024 show in Paris back in February–the star felt emboldened to push the envelope more than she typically would for the red carpet. “I’m very much a less-is-more kinda girl, and comfort is key for me,” she said. “So it’s nice to lean into something a bit more dramatic and high fashion… to be able to work with someone like Jonathan and his team on a dress like this… it’s really special.”
Anderson is just one among millions of viewers who fell in love with Em and Dex after watching Mod and her co-star Leo Woodall in the Netflix series. “This stuff is always weird… it changes your life and it doesn’t,” Ambika said of the success of One Day. The 28-year-old certainly doesn’t seem in any danger of letting the attention go to her head. Once the business of the red carpet was out of the way (“A lot of people’s hard work have gone into one person’s look–I want to make sure I get a lot of nice photos”), Mod planned to make the most of the Met Gala’s unrivaled people-watching opportunities. “I’ve got this image in my head of me sitting in a corner being like, oh my God!” she said. “I intend to spend a lot of time in the bathroom… I’m going to need to wee a lot.”
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