After 8 Years, Linda Evangelista Made Her Return at the 2024 Met Gala

Linda Evangelista was back on the Met steps at the 2024 Met Gala. Last night marked the supermodel’s first Met since 2015, following her return to public life in September. “I can’t believe that I’m going,” Evangelista tells Vogue. The Super graced the 2024 Met Gala on the arm of jewelry designer Ana Khouri, and wore a bespoke piece from Khaite.

While other attendees often opt to step outside of reality for fashion’s big night, Evangelista wanted to feel like herself. Thus, she turned to a label that’s a mainstay in her closet. “I wear a lot of Khaite in my real life,” she says. Evangelista reached out to Khaite designer Catherine Holstein to see if she would fashion her look. “She said yes, and, oh, I was so excited!”

Evangelista only had one request for the night: no black. “The one thing I really wanted to do was push myself out of black, and that’s what we’ve done,” she says. Together they wound up with an organic silk gazar that draped over Evangelista’s body. “It’s so dreamy and light—it’s light like a cloud," Evangelista says. I feel so comfortable in it, and I’m really, really, really happy.”

Courtesy of Khaite

“As Linda is a legendary icon we wanted nothing more than to simply frame her face, keeping that concept as simple as possible,” designer Catherine Holstein tells Vogue. “The fabric quite literally draped around her entire body right up to her clavicle in order to highlight Ana’s magnificent jewelry. Working with the both of them has been an absolute dream come true.”

The model, who studied gemology in high school, was thrilled to attend with Khouri, who constructed tourmaline chandelier earrings made of two different shades of green stones for the occassion. “It feels very natural for me to look into the natural world to inform my designs,” Khouri says. “With that, this year’s theme felt perfect for me. The green tourmaline earrings that I created have the most beautiful gemstones that capture nature and the time that comes before us.” While she looked to the natural beauty of the stones, the jeweler was also inspired by her guest. “Linda’s eyes are so special—their beauty is really unmatched,” she says. “I looked to take a cue from her eye color and create an ‘unmatched’ pair of earrings: one set of impossibly blue stones like her eyes and one set of radiant green stones that link back to nature.”

The sculptural earrings contained 91 carats of tourmaline and diamonds, and were fashioned in 18 karat fair-mined gold. “When I saw them, I almost died,” Evangelista says of the earrings.

Courtesy of Ana Khouri

Although she hadn’t attended a Met since 2015’s “China: Through the Looking Glass,” Evangelista had previously graced the carpet 11 times over the years, making last night her 12th Met Gala. She attended her first in 1993, “Diana Vreeland: Immoderate Style,” wearing a black ankle-length dress with woven straps by Karl Lagerfeld for Chloé, which came from her own closet. “I did the campaigns and I would choose a bunch of dresses after the show, and they would give them to me,” Evangelista recalls. “So this was out of my closet. It was a different experience back then. I'm dressed like me.”

Since then, the chameleonic model has donned a variety of looks for fashion’s big night. For “Haute Couture” in 1995, she wore an ’80s-esque black lace strapless Chanel dress and a string of pearls, while for 2013’s “Punk: Chaos to Couture,” she opted for a gray cloud of tulle from Marchesa. For 2015 appearance, Evangelista got ahead of the now-raging coquette trend, wearing a red Moschino dress with an oversized black bow draped over one shoulder.

While Evangelista has rocked a host of looks across the style spectrum over many Met Galas, last night’s might be her favorite yet. “I think both of these women get it right, and I just love their taste so much,” she says of Holstein and Khouri. But most importantly: “It feels like me.”

Below, Linda Evangelista took us behind the scenes as she got ready for the 2024 Met Gala.