How Met Gala 2025’s most striking looks can inspire your next character design

The Met Gala is often a cauldron of weird and wonderful design and fashion choices, but the event’s experimental soup of high fashion can be the perfect inspiration for creating new, outlandish character designs. Whether you’re creating a gothic character design or an elegant anime hero in Procreate, there’s plenty of inspiration here.

This year’s Met Gala 2025 theme of ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’ – which focuses on how clothing and design is connected to and empowers black identity – is a great one to pick from, whether its Zendaya striking a pose in Louis Vuitton or Dua Lipa’s sprawling feathered Chanel dress, each outfit feels more suited to a fantasy video game like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 than they do the red carpet.

Below I pick some of the outfits, designs and poses that could make a great mood board for a character concept, illustration or even simply pair a look down to set a colour palette or shape guide. If you’re inspired, read our best digital art software guide and best drawing tablets roundup for the tools you’ll need.

Met Gala 2025 designs to inspire

1. Dua Lipa in Chanel

This elegant, sprawling design from Chanel features the kind of dramatic trailing dress I could imaging seeing on a villain – a powerful sorceress or a skilled diplomat – or even a darkly engaging protagonist holding a secret.

The feathered features of the flowing, voluminous gown could easily become something more, whether that’s something that unfurls to reveal sharp projectiles or a spinning attack to avoid. Dua Lipa’s Met Gala dress is an Elder Ring vibe, gothic and avant-garde.

2. Colman Domingo in Valentino

The simplicity of this one creates a blocky silhouette that perhaps isn’t ideal, but the striking blue cape and intricate tailoring of the shoulder padded area could be picked apart to create a bold sorcerer character or a fighter pre-battle – I can imagine Capcom or SNK picking from this for a character who’d shrug off the simple cape to reveal a new costume.

But there’s plenty here to pick apart and inspire; the elaborate shoulder and chest design hints at ceremonial armour while the pleated cape shows how long lines can be used to good effect.

The design suggests ways to embed storytelling in a character design; Colman Domingo’s outfit teases life in a court but also how to hide storytelling until a big reveal.

3. Chappell Roan in Paul Tazewell

If you need inspiration for a colour palette Chappell Roan’s pink suit and cape from this year’s Met Gala 2025 is a great place to draw inspiration. Despite the Superfine: Tailoring Black Style theme, which led many designers to opt for black and white, this use of pink stands out.

The vibrant pink colour is a mix of tones, and feels assertive and youthful. I can see this colour palette working in a game, but also in the context of the Met Gala shows how colour can be used to stand out.

Picking more from this outfit, you could draw inspiration from the patchwork elements and chevron design. This could be used to create a character you see as unconventional within your game’s world, or even suggest a character who has an artistic leaning. It’s a good example of how bold colours can be used and remain elegant.

4. Jenna Ortega in Balmain

Come on, it’s armour design but in a weirdly refined and elegant way. Taken at face value, your character’s not going to take down Final Fantasy’s Bahamut or Elden Ring’s Malenia any time soon dress like this, but there are elements of this metallic designer dress by Balmain that can picked from.

Balmain is known for detail, and this design reuses old metal rulers to make the dress – even if you just lift this one detail it can show how everyday objects can be reused, bent and designed to create unique armour.

The silhouette is unusual. The narrowness of it, that grows from bottom up, and how the dress hugs the ground, is a unique look – again this could inspire a character or boss that feels connected to her environment; a sorceress that can channel elemental attacks or simply as a new kind of silhouette to experiment with.

5. Zendaya in Louis Vuitton

The tailored suit matched to a floppy-fringed hat feels like it could sit comfortably into Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s Cirque du Soleil meets Final Fantasy art style. It’s a look made for a game’s lead hero, and offers a good starting point from which to pivot into more extreme designs – a larger hat is a must.

This is the kind of fashion design that makes the Met Gala a good resource for a mood board; it’s eye-catching and exaggerated but in a tailored accessible way. You may only grab aspects for your character – the large hat, the elegant silhouette, the feminine tailoring – but there’s plenty here to pick from

If you want to make your own outfit, read our guide to the best Cricut machines that can cut the patterns for you.