Fashion

Ashi Studio Understood the Assignment at the 2026 Met Gala

BYMille Team

May 5, 2026

On May 4, as is tradition, the first Monday of May saw fashion’s biggest night unfold on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The 2026 Met Gala returned with its usual mix of spectacle and scrutiny, this year orbiting around a deceptively simple theme: Fashion Is Art.

It’s a brief that sounds straightforward until you realize just how many directions it can splinter into. Some attendees leaned literal, referencing canonical works, sculptures, and paintings. Others took a more conceptual route, treating their bodies as living canvases, blurring the line between garment and installation. And then there were those who, as always, showed up in something beautiful but vaguely adjacent, missing the point entirely. But if there was one house that didn’t just understand the assignment, but dissected it, studied it, and delivered it back with surgical precision, it was Ashi Studio.

Emily Blunt wearing Ashi Studio at the 2026 Met Gala.

Saudi couturier Mohammed Ashi dressed multiple guests on the carpet this year, including The Devil Wears Prada star Emily Blunt in a custom creation with glass beads and tassel detailing at the shoulders that took over 250 hours to create and American businesswoman Jennifer Rubio who turned heads in who turned heads in a sculptural, high-gloss corset that read more like carved wood than fabric, complete with a three-dimensional figure climbing across the bodice. But it was Lebanese jewelry designer and socialite Sabine Getty who crystallized the brand’s vision into a single, unforgettable moment.

Her custom Ashi Studio gown, drawn from the brand’s Spring 2026 couture collection, was constructed as a hyper-real, body-mapped illusion, redefining the naked dress. A sculpted corset sat at the core, hand-painted to mimic skin, musculature, and shadow, creating the uncanny effect of a body both exposed and encased at once.

From afar, it read like a nude form, but upon closer inspection, the craftsmanship revealed itself. Painted contours melted into sheer, feather-light layers of tulle that clung to her frame like a second skin, dissolving at the hem into something almost ghostly.

Sabine Getty wearing Ashi Studio at the 2026 Met Gala.

The gown also featured strategically placed hands, which were painted and sculpted onto the dress, referencing classical compositions while simultaneously playing with modesty, illusion, and control. It was a clever nod to the long history of the nude in art, where gesture and placement often carry as much meaning as exposure itself.

Getty accessorized the gown with rings stacked across her fingers that mirrored the jeweled hands embedded into the dress, further collapsing the boundary between the real body and the constructed one. The result was striking. In a year where many interpreted “Fashion Is Art” by referencing art, Ashi Studio did something more interesting by becoming it.

Ashi Studio Understood the Assignment at the 2026 Met Gala

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Ashi Studio Understood the Assignment at the 2026 Met Gala

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