Ikea has weighed in on this year’s Met Gala outfits.
On Monday 6 May, Grammy winner Doja Cat attended the 2024 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City to honour the Costume Institute’s spring exhibit, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion”. The “Say So” singer was one of the many attendees who did their best to abide by the evening’s dress code, called “The Garden of Time”, after JG Ballard’s 1962 short story of the same name.
Prior to the red carpet event, Doja Cat walked out of New York City’s The Mark Hotel wearing a bath towel wrapped around her body. The white towel, designed by Vetements, featured a tag with a serial number and the word “dress” written on it.
She also wore a matching white towel wrapped around her head, accessorising with platform shoes and a makeup look that appeared as if she had mascara running down her face.
Just days after Doja Cat stepped out in a towel for the Met Gala, Ikea made an advertisement based on the “Demons” singer’s attire. The Swedish furniture brand’s post on its UK Instagram page featured a woman in a white bath towel wrapped around her body with a similar towel on her head. However, this time the tag on the towel read, “Doja,” to showcase Ikea’s play on the singer’s outfit.
The brand even had the model walk down a set of stairs as if she was on the steps of the Met museum, along with another shot of her eating from the store’s food hall.
“Have you MET the newest addition to our range,” Ikea joked in its caption. “Introducing the DÖJA Towel dress.”
In the comments, many people praised Ikea for the Met Gala-themed ad and joked about how fast the brand’s marketing team was able to come up with the idea.
“Give the marketing team a raise,” one commenter wrote.
Another person agreed, writing: “The marketing team works FAST.”
“This is brilliant!” a third user added. “Tbh I thought about the Ikea towel the minute I saw the outfit at MET.”
The brand also posted another amusing ad for its “Doja” towel on TikTok with on-screen text that read: “POV: You have the Met Gala at 5pm and a meatball dinner at 6pm.”
After arriving to the Met Gala on Monday evening, Doja Cat changed into a second outfit to walk the red carpet: a white T-shirt dress, also by Vetements, that was made to appear wet and clung to her body.
In an interview with the Associated Press, the singer explained how she thought the dress fit into the overall theme of the Met Gala, noting that “cotton” was her flower of choice in “The Garden of Time” dress code.
“I felt like it was timeless to choose a white T-shirt, and I feel like a wet T-shirt is very sexy. And so I went with that,” she told the outlet.
Speaking to Entertainment Tonight on the red carpet, the rapper explained that she knew many people would pick a flower-themed outfit for the Met Gala, so she made the decision to choose the “most used flower”.
Doja Cat said she viewed her fashion choice as “very poetic” and knew it “wouldn’t blend in too much”.
The singer even revealed exactly how she went about achieving her wet T-shirt look – using hair gel. When asked how far she was willing to go to create a memorable outfit, Doja Cat aptly said: “I’m performing, it’s a show tonight.”
