Ahead of his Met Gala 2023 debut, Pusha T was relaxed as ever.
“There’s actually no pressure. I’m really impressed with the look. It takes just enough risk for me,” the rapper told Vanity Fair of the Thom Browne look he wore to Monday night’s Met Gala.
By Brendan O’Connor
An avid Thom Browne shopper, Pusha started cultivating a formal relationship with the fashion house in 2019 when he wore the brand to the Grammys to much acclaim. Working alongside stylist Corey Stokes to create a look for Monday’s Met Gala, he opted for Thom Browne again, but embodying this year’s Karl Lagerfeld theme meant moving beyond fashion. “Corey brought a few ideas to the table, but once we heard that Karl was the muse for the evening, it went from a fashion conversation into an attitude conversation,” he says.
Pusha’s black-and-white double-breasted suit with satin ribbon tweed—an ode to the signature tweed of Lagerfeld’s Chanel—opposite of black grosgrain with white tipping throughout encapsulated Thom Browne’s sartorial whimsy while honoring the black-and-white suiting that has become synonymous with Lagerfeld himself. The look came together at the last minute, with a final fitting shortly before Pusha T made his way up the steps of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
By Brendan O’Connor
While prepping for fashion’s biggest night, Pusha relied on a trustworthy few for final approval of his look. “That’s just a small collective of my friends and Thom Browne’s team,” he says. “I like to check all the boxes and make sure that everything is perfect from the actual styling to any last-minute extras I may want to throw on. Finally, I’ll have my team look at me and be like, ‘All right. How can you make this even more you?’ By the time we check that final box, that’s how we know we’ve mastered the look, and I’m owning the look and the look isn’t owning me.”
That kind of confidence was the best show of reverence for the night’s muse. “There’s an energy that he gives off. A confidence. I wanted to make sure the outfit was something that I could wear with that same confidence. The best half of the battle is trying to pull something like this off with someone as strong as a personality as Karl in mind,” he says.
By Brendan O’Connor
As a recording artist, naturally, music was a big part of setting that tone while getting ready for the evening. “I’m definitely listening to music. I personally go back to ’90s hip hop because that was one of the better times in hip hop, but solely because you had to be on point with every aspect: fashion, music, lyricism. It was a whole 360-degree view.”
Self-care is also an important part of Pusha’s pre–Met Gala process. “The one thing that I do before anything like this is get a facial,” he says, swearing by an esthetician in his home state of Virginia before leaving town for any big event. “You have to make sure that glow is right,” he says.
Fashion, facials, and fanfare aside, Pusha knows the attendance at the Met Gala captures a certain zeitgeist that he’s grateful to be a part of. “Relevance as a whole is usually here, and just being included in that bunch is an honor, honestly,” he says.