Editors

A New Take on #MetGala2019: The Looks Reimagined as Minerals

EditorsMay 10, 2019

A New Take on #MetGala2019: The Looks Reimagined as Minerals

Senior Editor Brecken Branstrator hopes readers enjoy one Twitter user’s comparisons as much as she did.

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When one Twitter user saw this 2019 Met Gala look from singer Florence Welsh of Florence + The Machine, she immediately thought it looked like tourmaline, setting her off on a thread comparing the night’s fashions to minerals. (Photo credits: Getty and Damien Ferronato)
I’ve grown to enjoy following the Met Gala and its resulting fashion choices, especially when celebrities really embrace the theme and go all out for the event.

I particularly liked this year’s theme, “Camp,” and the looks it brought to the red (check that, pink) carpet. You could tell plenty of the A-listers were having fun with it and letting loose.

There were many great roundups to click through online, including our Fashion Editor Ashley Davis giving us her top five jewelry looks from the night.

Another of my favorite takes from the night—brought to my attention courtesy of our associate editor, Lenore Fedow—was the Twitter user who found a new way to analyze the fashion choices—by reimagining attendees’ looks as minerals.

Celeste Labedz (@celestelabedz) told me via direct message on Twitter that she has a degree in geology and currently is working on a PhD in geophysics so she “naturally think(s) of most things in terms of the Earth.”

She said when she saw a picture of singer Florence Welch’s green and purple Met Gala look on Twitter the color scheme immediately reminded her of tourmaline, fluorite or a similar mineral, and “it all spiraled from there.”

I’m jealous I didn’t think of it first.

Here are some of my favorites from Labedz’s Twitter take on the Met Gala.

(A note on photo credits: though Labedz compiled the comparison photos for her Tweets, the original images came from this BuzzFeed article, and the list of mineral photo credits can be found here.)

 
I can’t get over how much I love this one. I don’t think Lucy Boynton’s look would be my top choice on its own, but the way it matches this elbaite specimen’s color gradient is just too good.

 
The color! The way her dress mimics the shape of the crystal specimen! This Madelaine Petsch/fluorite comparison is perfect. 

 
This one is so specific, but as only someone with a deep knowledge about the subject could, Labedz has perfectly matched the color details. 

 
The way the purple feeds into the white shades on Lilly Singh’s dress just screams amethyst, doesn’t it? It couldn’t be anything else.

 
When you look at it this way, singer and songwriter Thalia’s dress is basically a jeweled version of azurite and siltstone. 

 
And this glorious finish, because why not. (It feels a lot like Rihanna’s yellow 2015 Met Gala dress, which was also compared to various things, including pizza.) 
To see all of Labedz’s mineral comparisons, visit the thread on Twitter.

Apparently, comparing Met Gala fashions to scientific specimens was a micro-trend this year. See the 2019 Met Gala looks as lichens here and as exoplanets here.
Brecken Branstratoris the senior editor, gemstones at National Jeweler, covering sourcing, pricing and other developments in the colored stone sector.

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