Elizabeth Debicki’s Dior Met Gala gown might look exquisitely simple, but beyond the swathes of jewel-toned, velvet-soft fabric pouring down her 6ft 3in frame like liquid gold, there are myriad intriguing references at play.
“Maria Grazia Chiuri got it spot on,” says stylist Elizabeth Saltzman, who presented the Dior creative director with a very specific protagonist for her client to play on the Met museum steps: Anita Louise’s Titania in the 1935 imagining of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, meets a “’70s kind of social cool girl today—maybe she’s in music, maybe she’s a thespian, maybe she’s a poet”—with the “whimsy of a ’60s heiress at a garden party” thrown in.
Despite the fun folklore sewn into the seams, “it’s very real”, asserts Saltzman, who maintains that slinking around the Upper East Side hotel suite in the shimmering look is the “most comfortable” she’s ever seen Debicki. “Elizabeth is so unique and ethereal, she lives without social media, but as soon as she walks into the room, people stop and notice. I’ve watched it happen everywhere.” For the British celebrity dresser—who moved to New York and found inspiration while people watching in Manhattan institutions such as Mortimer’s—Debicki’s innate ability to morph into familiar figures, from Princess Diana to The Great Gatsby’s Jordan Baker, is endlessly fascinating. “The Met Gala should be a fantasy moment; when else can you push it to the extreme?”