A princess goes to sleep for 100 years and is then restored to life by the kiss of a charming prince. It’s an ancient story whose title has now been attributed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute’s spring 2024 exhibition – Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion – which centres on the emotional textures of 250 historic garments too fragile ever to be worn again. But it’s also a tale that could perhaps loosely be applied to the past 12 months of Kylie Minogue’s career which – despite never having experienced even a brief lull since the ’80s – reached new heights thanks to the colossal success of “Padam Padam”, the mega hit dance record that delivered the 55-year-old pop star’s first Grammy award in two decades. Cue a starring role in Jean Paul Gaultier and Jimmy Choo’s advertising campaign, a sold-out run at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas, and nods from both Dua Lipa and Beyoncé. Now, Kylie is once again one of the most anticipated names on the Met Gala’s guest list.
Read more: Met Gala 2024 Red Carpet
The princely figure reviving Kylie from a decade-long slumber – her last appearance at the Met Gala was in 2014 when she attended alongside Marchesa’s Keren Craig and Georgina Chapman – is Diesel’s creative director Glenn Martens: a handsome rogue of a designer, who sealed Kylie’s comeback with a Swarovski-encrusted kiss. “She’s one of my favourite artists of all time,” says Martens in the days leading up to the fundraiser. “The first time I went to see a Kylie concert was when I was a design student in Antwerp in the early 2000s and ‘Slow’ is still one of my favourite pop songs. To me, Kylie means joy, happiness and fun, which are values both Diesel and I share.” Minogue’s Met Gala dress is an evolution of one of the designer’s autumn/winter 2024 creations, constructed from a sometimes transparent devoré denim knit – a technique that Diesel itself invented – and embellished with thousands of micro crystals. “It’s meant to look as though Kylie has been sleeping in this dress for hundreds of years,” Martens adds. “Leaving parts of the fabric dissolved around her body’s contours.”
That Kylie should partner with the kind of designer who is perhaps best known for dressing people like Megan Thee Stallion and Julia Fox is an emphatic statement on this pop musician’s newfound relationship with young fans on social media. “Time has passed, but the spirit shines through,” as Kylie herself puts it. “The dress feels at once glamorous and mysterious, and it harbours a hidden tale, crafted using incredible techniques to look like an organic yet sparkling interpretation of my ‘slept-in’ being. Glenn is a wildly talented, era-defining designer and it’s been such a joy to collaborate with him for this very special Met Gala moment.”
On an evening dedicated to fleeting and untouchable beauties – the exhibition breathes new life into some of the most delicate designs, among them Dior’s Junon gown and Alexander McQueen’s razor clam gown – Kylie perhaps symbolises the opposite. She is the ultimate example of what happens when someone best navigates the passage of time, a glitterball shapeshifting into new forms whenever a spotlight descends. “I think the most important thing is to understand who you are dressing and celebrate their personalities,” Martens concludes. “Kylie is a pop icon, and Diesel is all about legends and icons, the original heyday of the brand being during the MTV Nineties. And so, she really is the perfect match for us. We are so honoured to have Kylie at the brand’s very first time at the Met Gala.”
