Singaporean fashion designer Grace Ling makes Met Gala debut in Charles & Keith heels
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Grace Ling wore an aluminium breastplate by her namesake label and custom shoes by Singaporean footwear brand Charles & Keith.
PHOTO: REUTERS
SINGAPORE – The guest list for the annual Met Gala in New York City is a roll call of the apex figures in fashion, entertainment, sport, and increasingly, the high-powered worlds of commerce and Big Tech.
Among the 450 names in 2026 was a Singaporean fashion designer.
Home-grown fashion designer Grace Ling made her debut at the ritzy fund-raiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute on May 4, wearing an aluminium breastplate by her namesake label, and custom shoes by another prominent Singapore export, footwear brand Charles & Keith.
Home-grown fashion designer Grace Ling made her debut at the ritzy fund-raiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute on May 4.
PHOTO: AFP
Ling, 29, was invited by Google. She told The Straits Times: “I almost felt like everything that I did with my brand and career prepared me for this moment.”
That night, she danced beside musicians Tyla, Charli XCX and Katy Perry to a live performance by former frontwoman of rock band Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks, and pop star Sabrina Carpenter. Dinner was “surprisingly” yummy and she had tete-a-tetes with Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner and model-actress Hunter Schafer.
“It felt very surreal, like ‘Is this happening?’ But at the same time it was very chill. At the end of the day, everyone was very human,” added Ling.
The benefit, held on the first Monday in May, is one of the most closely watched events on the fashion calendar, typically attracting a billion global video views on organiser Vogue’s site alone.
American singer Beyonce, former tennis player Venus Williams and Australian-American actress Nicole Kidman chaired the 2026 edition with Vogue overseer and parent company Conde Nast’s global head of content Anna Wintour. Tickets were priced at about US$100,000 (S$127,000) each.
Ling is based in New York and has dressed stars like reality TV mogul Kim Kardashian, singer-actress Jennifer Lopez and actress Jenna Ortega. She opened her first boutique in the city in February 2025.
Her answer to the Fashion Is Art theme was a metal bodice, thorny and windswept – inspired by the “evil flowers” in Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch’s seminal Garden Of Earthly Delights. The piece was 3D-printed in aero-aluminium and plated with platinum. “I like to say a combination of technology with traditional methods of craft completes a Grace Ling product,” the School of the Arts graduate said.
Grace Ling’s answer to the Fashion Is Art theme was a silver-toned bodice that looked thorny and windswept.
PHOTO: REUTERS
She paired the sculptural, faintly apocalyptic top with a black skirt that pooled at her feet.
Ling co-designed the witchy stiletto heels from Charles & Keith: black and elongated with a mirrored metallic heel. A slim claw-like toecap added a biomorphic accent.
Grace Ling holding up her custom heels by Charles & Keith, designed for the 2026 Met Gala.
PHOTO: CHARLES & KEITH
A closer look at Ling’s custom Charles & Keith heels.
PHOTO: CHARLES & KEITH
TikTok’s Singaporean chief executive Chew Shou Zi was also in attendance with his wife, investor Vivian Kao. In 2024, he was one of the honorary chairs for the Met Gala, along with then creative director of Loewe Jonathan Anderson.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was the primary sponsor for the 2026 bash. The billionaire and his wife Lauren Sanchez were honorary chairs of the event.
Mr Bezos’ sponsorship has made for an especially contentious edition, with protesters papering the city with calls for a boycott in the days leading up to the event and a detractor attempting to crash the red carpet before he was removed by the police.
