“The designers must fight to the death to dress you,” Kelly Ripa told Zendaya, the 27-year-old actress, as they discussed her preparation for this year’s Met Gala on a recent episode of “Live With Kelly and Mark.”
Zendaya gave a knowing smile. Since she last attended the fashion extravaganza in 2019, she has become not only a leading actress onscreen (lately, in the tennis romance “Challengers”) but a red-carpet force whose looks can be anticipated almost as hotly as the projects they are meant to promote. Her committed style of dressing has become “a tool of both image-making and moneymaking,” wrote Jessica Testa, a fashion reporter for The New York Times.
So it is of intense interest to red-carpet watchers that Zendaya will return to the Met Gala on Monday for the first time in five years, this time as a co-chair. She will be styled by Law Roach, the “image architect” who has been working with her since she was 13. “We call each other our fashion soul mates,” he told Vanessa Friedman in a recent interview.
Zendaya’s willingness to take fashion risks has been on display at her past five Met Gala appearances, which have involved chain mail, parrots and a color-changing Cinderella dress with a pumpkin carriage purse. But ascending the steps has not exactly gotten easier with practice, she told Ms. Ripa: “It’s still terrifying.”
Below, a look through Zendaya’s Met Gala history.
2019
‘Camp: Notes on Fashion’
For the camp-themed gala in 2019, Zendaya assumed full Cinderella cosplay in a billowing ball gown with puff sleeves by Tommy Hilfiger. It transformed from gray to a luminous blue with the wave of a wand by Mr. Roach, who dressed as her fairy godmother.
