From a record-breaking exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art to one of fashion’s biggest nights, Miss Everything has made quite the journey.
Amy Sherald, who took the art world by storm with her paintings of Black life, attended the 2026 Met Gala with a dress inspired by a work of her own. The theme for this year’s event was “Costume Art,” and the dress code was “Fashion Is Art.”
The dress channeled her painting “Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance),” which Sherald created in 2013 while living in Baltimore. A Maryland Institute College of Art graduate, Sherald called the city home from 2001 to 2018.
The girl in “Miss Everything” wears white gloves and a bright red hat and holds an oversize teacup and saucer. The New York artist wore much longer gloves and a black dress with the same split pattern, featuring polka dots on the left half.
According to Vanity Fair, the dress is the result of a collaboration with designer Thom Browne, one of the most celebrated American designers of his generation.
Sherald’s exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art was the institution’s most attended exhibit in at least the past 26 years. Tickets sold out in February for the exhibit, which ran through early April.
The exhibit, “American Sublime,” comprises 38 portraits of Black subjects, including “Trans Forming Liberty,” in which a trans model is dressed as the Statue of Liberty. Last summer, Sherald pulled her show from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., due to censorship concerns. Weeks later, the BMA announced it would host the exhibit.
“The show is ‘American Sublime,’” Sherald told “60 Minutes.” “It was a whole narrative, and a trans woman is a part of that narrative for me.”
Zoey Washington, a former fashion editor for publications such as Vogue, Elle, People StyleWatch and Essence, described Sherald’s look as a win. Washington said Sherald looked “lovely,” adding that you “can’t go wrong with Thom Browne.”
“I think she had fun with bringing her work to life and extending the life of her work in a completely new way, having her work interpreted and having that full-circle moment, but having her work interpreted for her own wear, so that she could almost, in a way, step into her own painting, I think is really cool,” Washington said.
Sherald wasn’t the only person with Maryland ties to make a splash at the Met Gala.
Annapolis native designer Christian Siriano created one of the night’s most stunning pieces for Janelle Monáe. Washington called the look “an elaborate moss-meets-machine dress.”
Saying it was easily “one of the best dresses of the night,” she loved the whole AI, human and art backstory of the piece.
Banner reporter John-John Williams IV contributed to this story.
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