The primary time the painter Jordan Casteel noticed the costume Charles Elliot Harbison designed for her to put on to this 12 months’s Met Gala, she instantly began to cry.
“Not solely was it stunning to see this garment that’s tailor-made fairly actually for me,” she stated from her sofa after her closing becoming for what will likely be her first time attending the occasion. “It’s one thing that seems like they have been fascinated by me from the start to the top in designing it.”
“It is a fever dream,” she added.
Whereas Ms. Casteel had seen sketches and temper boards and was in fixed communication with Mr. Harbison in the course of the design course of, the summary got here to life when she was within the room with the garment and the a number of tailors who have been pinning and pricking the costume to her particular wants.
“I really feel female, I really feel daring,” she stated about carrying the robe. “It is a second the place our freedom — there’s the complexities of the world that we exist in, however for at the present time for this carpet for this second, we’re displaying up and this outfit makes me really feel like I’m stepping right into a model of myself that nobody would anticipate however that I do know I belong.”
She added, “I really feel I’m highly effective and I’m stunning and you will note me, my Black physique goes to be seen.”
Ms. Casteel, 36, describes the costume as Afro-futurism, or “the issues that we think about for ourselves,” she stated. “After I put it on, I believe it’s the female half that feels actually good.”
The costume can be a two-piece: a skirt and a high. They each have robust quantity factors across the hip and Ms. Casteel is anticipating to disclose an increasing number of of it because the evening goes on. And whereas the costume is a focus of the evening, it’s what is not going to be seen from the pink carpet that she feels proudest to put on.
Beneath the costume will likely be a necklace that belonged to Ms. Casteel’s grandmother, Margaret Buckner Young, who was an writer, educator and the primary Black lady to serve on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork.
“We’re all fascinated by the dandies in our life,” Ms. Casteel stated, referring to the theme of the gala this 12 months. “She original herself. I’m holding her spirit as shut as humanly potential on this second.”
“That is for her,” she added. “That can also be the liberty.”