By now you’ve seen the two looks Zendaya wore at the Met Gala – both John Galliano, one custom and one archival. There were actually two more looks that night. Inside the party, for her co-chairing duties, Zendaya actually changed into a more manageable dress to perform her duties.
This is basically like a tracksuit for her, lol.
Then, at the end of the night, for the after-party, it was yet another outfit.
Neither one of these were a moment but they were never intended to be. These were purely for function, she didn’t even bother posing in them, even though they were probably couture in and of itself.
Still, it’s four different dresses, requiring all kinds of choreography, which Law talks about in a new interview with Extra which is worth the watch (I've embedded it below) because it’s Show Your Work, it’s Law Roach – the man who invented his job description, image architect – describing his process and all the planning that went into producing Zendaya’s Met Gala takeover, including getting special permission from the Museum and sign-off from Anna Wintour, of course, to do a second look on the stairs. (Now every Met Gala co-chair is going to want to change into a second look. The monsters that Zendaya and Law will be creating!)
The interview is also noteworthy because Law confirms that “we buy”, meaning that he and Zendaya aren’t just out here wearing sh-t once and returning. What they can keep, they keep, and if keeping means paying, they pay. This is also, by the way, true of Law’s other major client, Celine Dion. Celine always buys.
Where Zendaya is concerned though – of course there are certain pieces, like the Mugler space suit that she wore for the London premiere of Dune: Part 2, that can’t be hers because they already belong to the Mugler collection. But most of the rest of her looks from that press tour and all of her looks from the Challengers press tour, and her dresses from award shows and other appearances, etc, through the years, are in their possession. For posterity.
For THEIR archive.
That’s the way Law has always operated. Before he and Zendaya became famous and successful together, he was already a student and a collector, with so many of his own personal pieces. So when they started collaborating and literally changing the industry he would have known to start preserving and protecting. It’s now been almost 15 years since they started their partnership. It has become a historic partnership, and this is not hyperbolic. What Zendaya and Law have done together is extraordinary – and you are seeing their legacy play out in pop culture every day with so many celebrities following the playbook that they invented, with so many fashion houses getting major boosts for their pieces when she wears them, with so many fans being educated about fashion and style from watching how Zendaya PERFORMS fashion. With so many emerging stylists learning from Law in how he works.
Of course there should be an archive. They should build a f-cking museum and charge entry fee so that we can go see their work in person – but not yet, since we expect so much more in the years to come; Zendaya, after all, is only 27. One day, though, that museum will be a reality. And if the Met Gala is still around then, the theme of the Met Gala the year that the Zendaya and Law museum opens, should be Zendaya and Law.
