Met Gala 2016: The red carpet goes tech
This year, the first Monday in May was all about the future.
Celebrities and fashion's biggest stars arrived at the Met Gala 2016 red carpet Monday evening, showing off styles that exemplified the evening's focus on the intersection of fashion and technology.
The gala served as the launch for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's new exhibition, "Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology," which presents cutting-edge fashion and investigates the relationship between tech -- or machine-focused -- and couture -- or handmade. The exhibit features more than 170 examples of couture and avant-garde designs from the early 1900s to today.
Clearly for many of the celebrity attendees, "tech" meant donning metallics, with everyone from Kim Kardashian to Lady Gaga to co-chair Taylor Swift shimmering in bright, futuristic ensembles. But some designers took the theme more to heart, integrating technology into the outfits themselves.
Claire Daines wore a Zac Posen dress that appeared at first as a simple, classic white gown -- the likes of which Grace Kelly might have worn 60 years ago -- but was actually filled with fiber optics that illuminated it in a multitude of shades.
And Karolina Kurkova wore a Marchesa gown that was designed as a collaboration between the designer and Watson, IBM's supercomputer. The LED-festooned dress changes color in response to online fans' emotional responses to it.