The Met Gala has seen Zendaya take the forms of Cinderella, a saint, and several personas in between. After serving as a cochair for the Met Gala 2024 and impressing us enough to make both Vanity Fair‘s best dressed list and the top theme winners of the night, all eyes are on Zendaya to see what she’ll dream up for the Met Gala 2025.
As a cochair last year alongside Condé Nast Global Chief Content Officer Anna Wintour, Chris Hemsworth, Bad Bunny, and Jennifer Lopez, Zendaya helped plan and promote the fundraising event. Though she was an early arrival on the carpet, that didn’t mean her look was necessarily completed early: Law Roach, who has worked with Zendaya on her fashion since she was 13, told The New York Times Thursday days before the event that the actor’s dress “isn’t even made.”
Zendaya, however, seemed unbothered.
“Hopefully with the Met, since I’ve been away for so many years, maybe this time around I won’t be so stressed,” she told USA Today ahead of the 2024 event, her first since 2019.
The actor made her Met Gala debut in 2015, the same year that Rihanna established herself as a Met must-watch with her canary yellow Guo Pei gown for the year’s “China: Through the Looking Glass” theme. The then 18-year-old Zendaya made a great first impression at the event herself in a knee-length Fausto Puglisi gown with a dramatic train and coordinating headpiece.
She attended every year between 2015 and 2019, stealing the show in looks such as a Versace take on Joan of Arc for 2018’s “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” theme, and even brought Roach along with her in 2019 to be the fairy godmother to her over-the-top, Tommy Hilfiger–clad Cinderella. That look, complete with a pumpkin carriage purse and special effects smoke billowing from Roach’s magic wand, coordinated with the night’s “Camp: Notes on Fashion” dress code.
The star then took a break from attending the party for a few years, only to make her triumphant Met Gala return in 2024. Zendaya donned not one but two show-stopping looks on the red carpet, wowing onlookers first with a bold peacock blue Maison Margiela Artisanal by John Galliano haute couture look, then later reappearing in a second look, also designed by Galliano. Her head-turning take two was a black archival Givenchy gown from 1996—Galliano’s very first haute couture collection for the house. She topped the look off with a colorful floral headpiece, posing herself as a bouquet: A centerpiece-worthy statement whose beauty would change with time as a nod to the exhibit’s “Garden of Time” theme.
As for the Met Gala 2025, all eyes are on Zendaya to see what she’ll wow us with next.
Be sure to follow along with Vanity Fair’s live coverage of the 2025 Met Gala on May 5 to watch fashion’s biggest night unfold.
