Indigenous luxury on display at this year's Met Gala

The red carpet at this year's Met Gala in New York carried the steps of Indigenous ancestors, and some notable Indigenous people too.

Keri Ataumbi, a Kiowa jew‐ eller and metalsmith based in Sante Fe, N.M., collabo‐ rated with Gabriela Hearst to create the Met Gala look for actor Lily Gladstone, a recent Oscar nominee for her work on Killers of the Flower Moon.

"Both of our nations have a similar belief system that our ancestors are in the sky and that when we pass on we go up into the stars," said Ataumbi.

"So to look upon the Milky Way [is] to look upon our an‐ cestors."

Gladstone is Blackfeet and Nimiipuu on her father's side. Like Ataumbi's nation, hers is from the Great Plains.

The Met gala - an annual star-studded fundraiser for the Costume Institute at NY‐ C's Metropolitan Museum of Art - is considered by some to be one of the biggest nights in fashion.

This year's fundraiser was co-chaired by Zendaya, Jen‐ nifer Lopez, Bad Bunny and Chris Hemsworth.

At the Monday event, Gladstone wore a simple black organza cape and silk wool dress with nearly 500 recycled metal stars and glass beads, which Ataumbi handcrafted and embroi‐ dered into the shape of nine different constellations.

She said she was ap‐ proached by Gladstone's people about the collabora‐ tion right after the Oscars in March.

Arranging and embroider‐ ing the constellations onto Gladstone's cape took her over 120 hours to complete.

"We're really born with ac‐ tual couture, and those ob‐ jects that are made for us are usually made by our aunties and our uncles and our rela‐ tives, and they're made with intention and prayer," Ataumbi said.

She said in making the dress for Gladstone, she wanted to ensure the actor felt embraced and supported by her own ancestors, as if they were walking with her. Northern florals

Yukon fashion designer Heather Dickson, who is Tlingit, Tagish and Nuxalk, made the beadwork for Gwich'in and Lakota model and activist Quannah Chas‐ inghorse to wear.

"It was so cool to see In‐ digenous luxury like moose hide, home-tanned hide and caribou-hair tufting and beadwork at such a high-pro‐ file fashion event," said Dick‐ son, who said she always paid attention to Met Gala trends as a fashion student.

Dickson said she was only given a week to create the look: a fully beaded belt, ear‐ rings, two rings, two hair beads and four bobby pins.

WATCH | Heather Dick‐ son on beading for the Met Gala:

She said she was sewing from 6 a.m. to midnight to complete her beadwork and wanted to include some ex‐ tra pieces so Chasinghorse had options to choose from.

She relied on community and friends to meet her tight deadline, trading for moose hide and collaborating with artist Melanie Parsons to make the earrings.

"I picked like the softest one [hide] that I thought would be beautiful to bead," she said.

This year's Met Gala cele‐ brated the Costume Insti‐ tute's upcoming exhibition Sleeping Beauties: Reawak‐ ening Fashion, which the gallery says "features approx‐ imately 220 garments and ac‐ cessories spanning four cen‐ turies, all visually connected through themes of nature." The dress code was "Garden of Time."

Dickson said that theme resonated with her on many levels, particularly because the forget-me-not flower sig‐ nifies the coming of summer and was a perfect comple‐ ment to Chasinghorse's cus‐ tom lavender H&M gown.

In an Instagram post, she said she used 50 different types of beads in the pieces Chasinghorse wore.

The materials included caribou hair, home-tanned moose hide, emerald beads, labradorite beads, silverplated beads, aurora borealis crystals, mother of pearl beads, white topaz beads, dentalium shells, hand-dyed feathers and antique Euro‐ pean beads, she said.

In the post, she also thanked Chasinghorse for trusting her and making a dream she didn't even know she could have possible.