Sarah Pidgeon put a twist on ’90s minimalism at the 2026 Met Gala—literally.
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 plaid, sculptural bandeau scarf top. “I ended up texting my stylist, ‘Oh, I really like this one,’” she recalls. “It just felt very whimsical, but it felt very powerful at the same time, and very architectural,” she says. 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.
While the actor became something of a household name this year thanks to Love Story, this is not her first Met Gala. Pidgeon, who was then starring in Stereophonic on Broadway, attended the 2024 Met Gala, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” in a Christopher John Rogers dress. (Pidgeon recalls making a mad dash from the cast performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to the Met. “We had something like 45 minutes to get out of my hair, makeup, costume, and get ready for the Met,” she says.)
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.
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 they showcase at their runway shows. McCollough and Hernandez hung Ellsworth Kelly’s Yellow Panel With Red Curve at the entrance of their inaugural show, spring 2026, and placed artist Cosima von Bonin’s textile sculptures amid the seating of the fall 2026 show.
