- Hello Vogue, it's Naomi Campbell here.
I'm going to walk you through my looks
of all the Met Balls that I attended over the years.
This is quite a thrill.
[upbeat music]
So here we go.
So the first look is 1990.
It's Gianni Versace.
It was the first Met Ball I ever attended.
I was in such awe to first be invited by Gianni Versace
through my roommate Christy Turlington.
The 90s was,
you wore everything.
You dressed up in the 90s.
If you, it didn't matter if you were going for dinner.
We would all go to dinner outside of work,
Christy, Linda, I,
we would dress up.
You know, enjoy your clothes,
enjoy your accessories, enjoy your hair.
This one also I'm wearing Gianni Versace.
Wow, I loved this dress.
It was slim-fitting and body hugging
and just glistened.
I remember when I saw this dress
for the first time I thought,
"Wow, Gianni, is that for me?"
It seemed like one of those dresses that you read
in those fairytale books, you know?
So here we are, 2001.
The theme was Jackie Kennedy.
I can't quite say that we actually were appropriate
for the theme, but in any rate,
we were wearing Dolce & Gabbana.
Getting to be next to Iman who I love and respected
and always looked up to,
was just, you know, another dream conquered in my life.
For the Met Ball,
it's primping the whole day.
It's kinda crazy.
You know, you get like a facial, you do your nails, we get,
some kind of wellness treatment to feel good about yourself
and then you start with the hair and make up around three.
If you're doing four, you're pushing it.
2003 and here I am wearing Dolce again
with Victoria Beckham.
I love this whole collection they did
with like the sowing and the lace.
I still have this dress.
It was definitely ruby red night 'cause I've got
tons of rubies on.
I've got a choker and a crucifix, mistake.
Definitely less would have been best on the neck.
So here I am, 2006,
and this was the Anglomania
so as a Brit, you know, I wanted to wear a Brit.
Anna had thought that it would be a great idea
if I wore Alexander McQueen.
This was to be his last season at Givenchy
so Anna actually chose the color of my pale green dress
and then Lee did his magic with the Givenchy staff
and one of the things I remember so much from the fitting
is how much Lee loved his staff
and how he treated them.
It was just one of my fittings I'll never forget.
I felt very neat
and I felt very simple and classic
but in a good way.
I didn't feel like I'd overdone it.
I felt like it was all a good package.
So this is 2007.
I'm in no other than my papa, Azzedine Alaia,
which I think women all over the world aspired and loved
Azzedine Alaia for the way he made our bodies look.
What can I say?
It was always a unique experience to be fitted by papa
and for him to create on your body
in the middle of the night
and to see the finished product
and he did everything himself.
I have the fondest memories of all of those times.
Few years had gone by and I hadn't been to the Mets
and now we skip to 2010
and I'm back to my old pals again.
[laughs]
When you feel that you wanna be that Sicilian
type of voluptuous woman,
you go to no other than Dolce & Gabbana.
I actually think my hair was not working.
No, it should've just been straight, no curls.
And I could've done without the lips too.
Lady Gaga performed at this one.
It now became like 10 times bigger.
Everybody and anybody was at the Met.
It's a great turn out for fashion and our industry.
It's our Oscars.
Okay, so, we go to 2011
which was a very bittersweet Met.
Lot of tear and sadness still
as it was for our beloved Alexander McQueen.
And Sarah Burton, who I got to know while working
with Lee over the years, made me a beautiful dress.
It's a masterpiece to me.
This dress was so intricate because it was made on
a corset that was sheer,
made to my skin color.
It had like a long train cape but it was not really a cape,
it was connected to the dress at the back.
I felt like I was really embodying Lee the best I could
in his honor.
I do think my hair could have been more simple.
If Lee had been alive, because he was someone
that would always tell us what he liked,
he would have said straight and that's it.
Straight and back, I think.
So here we are now speeding forward to 2014.
My God, I've been to so many Mets.
Charles James: Beyond Fashion was the exhibition
and I was wearing Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci.
He was so clear in his vision, what he wanted me to wear
and he just said I want you to be
kind of Diana Ross-ish
and glamorous and I loved that it was like a pale,
soft, baby pink.
I felt very warm
and girly and flirty.
I felt very comfortable in my skin in this dress.
With Riccardo and with this dress from Givenchy,
I think I did like one fitting
and then the day of.
As models from the beginning, we never really got involved
with what the designers wanted to put us in.
We'd just say okay.
I mean, it would have to be something like really, really,
ridiculous for us to say we won't wear that.
It just never happened, it just was easy.
Here we are, 2015, a year later
and the theme for this year's was
China: Through the Looking Glass.
I wanted to wear Burberry and Christopher Bailey
was the artistic director of Burberry
and so Burberry is what we wore.
When I first met Christopher Bailey,
he worked with Gucci when Tom Ford was the creative director
so I know Christopher Bailey
knew how to make me a sexy dress [laughs]
and he did.
I loved this dress, it was like a chartreuse, sequins, matte
with feathers at the bottom, like a ostrich feather.
And it was just really, really, close to my body.
It had a long, plunging neckline.
No jewelry this time, absolutely nothing.
Not one necklace.
Zilch.
I just wore a bracelet and that was it.
It was great.
I loved this dress
and I got to have accompany me
my wonderful and great friend, director Lee Daniels.
It was a fun Met and it was a fun
after party too that night.
We were out dancing all night long.
2016, Manus Machina.
And so it's more this futuristic thing.
There were some intricate dresses.
There were dresses with electricity,
I mean, I cannot tell you.
I was wearing Peter Dundas
and I thought I just want a simple dress.
It was a kind of bra top
then a skirt.
Then he connected the bra top to the skirt
and he did that on the Sunday,
the day before the Met.
We thought about putting a big feather coat
but then we just thought it's too much.
It was just better to go simple like that.
Okay, so, here we are, 2017, it's Comme Garcons
and I've known Rei Kawakubon and worked for Rei
since I was 16, since 1986
so it was such an honor.
I mean she could like five exhibitions
without repeating the same thing, easy,
because she's just got so much amazing archive.
This is the first time I'd gone to the Met
without a designer.
So I was like, okay, what am I gonna wear?
Of course, you know what I wore.
I wore Azzedine Alaia, I wore my papa
and it was this black velvet dress with these pleats
and like pressed metals that just went all the way around
in a very high split.
It wasn't that high but we made it higher than it was.
I was so,
wanted to wear Alaia to this one because Azzedine and Rei
Kawakubo were very, very close friends
and so I thought it would be appropriate.
So here we are, skipping two years forward to 2019
and this Met Ball is called Camp, C-A-M-P.
We used to say that word in the late 80s and 90s
the whole time.
Oh, she's so camp, he's so camp.
As you can imagine, the word camp
you can go in so many directions.
Up, down, across, whatever
and that's exactly how it went down.
I was going to the Met this year with Sir Jony Ive
so I chose this year to wear Pierpaolo Valentino.
Maison Valentino and Pierpaolo.
So here comes Saturday.
I go up to Valentino's store to do my fitting.
I tried my dress but there was something,
I don't know,
it was too much fabric, I felt,
and Pierpaolo came and he completely started
the dress from scratch.
Basically, he made me a bodysuit
and put like a skirt around
and then I had the incredible cape.
I mean, my outfit was really lace tights
and a chiffon top with a chiffon skirt around
and it was made in like 30 hours.
I've been asked the most fun I've had at the Met ever.
It was incredible to see Cher.
Everyone just like, got out their cameras
and
it's just like the Queen's arrived
and walking in with Pierpaolo,
Dame Joan Collins who I think epitomizes
the word "Camp."
this was her Met Ball
so I think she was winner of that hands down.
This hair, I decided for this Valentino look,
first if all it was gonna be short hair,
no, no, no.
Then it was gonna be an afro hair,
no, no, no.
And then we decided to have 40 inches of hair.
We wanted long hair.
We thought 40 inches would be perfect.
- [Man] Right there, we're in the front, we're in the front.
There it is, hold that, beautiful.
- Thank you all for joining me on my Met Ball looks.
I wanna thank you, Anna,
for having me for so many years.
From when I first went to where we are now.
Wow, wow, wow.
Congratulations, bravo, because it is,
it's really an event.
[gentle music]