It Took a Flight From Paris to Australia to Make Sarah Pidgeon’s 2026 Met Gala Look

Sarah Pidgeon put a twist on ’90s minimalism at the 2026 Met Gala.

This year, the actor turned to Loewe’s new(ish) designers, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, who took the Fashion Is Art dress code to heart with a twisted bandeau top and column skirt, rendered in chartreuse matte satin.

When Pidgeon attended Loewe’s fall 2026 show in Paris this March, she was instantly drawn to Look 43—a sculptural plaid bandeau-scarf top. “I ended up texting my stylist, ‘Oh, I really like this one,’” she recalls. “It just felt very whimsical but very powerful at the same time, and very architectural.” As if by fate, when Pidgeon met with McCollough and Hernandez to discuss Met Gala ideas, the very same look served as the designers’ inspiration point.

Sarah Pidgeon in Loewe at the 2026 Met Gala.

Photo: Getty Images

Loewe fall 2026 Look 43 served as the inspiration for Sarah Pidgeon’s 2026 Met Gala look.

Photo: Isidore Montag / Gorunway.com

While the actor became something of a household name this year thanks to Love Story, this is not her first Met Gala. Pidgeon, then starring in Stereophonic on Broadway, attended the 2024 Met Gala, for “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” in a Christopher John Rogers dress. (Pidgeon recalls making a mad dash from the cast performance on The Tonight Show to the Met: “We had something like 45 minutes to get out of my hair, makeup, and costume and get ready for the Met.”)

Although Pidgeon doesn’t have first-Met jitters to worry about, she still had to overcome some logistical hurdles to get here. While the actor and designers were on the same page from the jump, the fittings process proved a serious undertaking. “I’ve been shooting in Australia, which certainly makes fittings a bit more difficult—at least long distance—but it was so magical,” she says. To help the process, the Loewe team sent a tailor all the way from Paris to the actor’s Queensland outpost for a toile fitting, where she tried on a muslin prototype of the dress.

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The look nods to the sculptures displayed throughout the “Costume Art” exhibition. “Every outfit I’ve seen from Loewe is this sculptural work of art,” she says. Beyond that, the brand is deeply intertwined with the fine arts community, be it through the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize or the artists it routinely showcases at its runway shows. McCollough and Hernandez hung Ellsworth Kelly’s Yellow Panel With Red Curve at the entrance of their inaugural spring 2026 show, and placed artist Cosima von Bonin’s textile sculptures amid the seating of their fall 2026 show.

As Pidgeon notes, the entire piece comes alive on the body. “I feel not only statuesque,” she says, “but like I am the canvas for this piece of art that will walk up the Met steps.”