By Keerthi Ramesh and Kashmira Konduparty
Long before the Met Gala 2026 framed fashion as museum-worthy art, Indian textiles have existed as living galleries woven from temple carvings, regional crafts and architectural traditions.
While the dress code for this year’s Met Gala was “Fashion is Art” which focused on intersecting couture inspired by art, Indian fashion is not just inspired by it, it is in fact a continuation and representation of the country’s artistic, architectural and cultural history. Every clothing carries the memory of stone, silk and civilization, proving that Indian fashion was never simply clothing, it was architecture designed to move.
The Met Gala, formally called the Costume Institute Benefit, is an annual fundraising festival where fashion meets purpose, held for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute on the Museum Mile of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York.
It is popularly recognized as the world’s most prestigious and glamorous event in fashion, where elite figures known for their fame, wealth, power, social influence, collide and converge simultaneously.
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Attendees are given the opportunity to express themselves through fashion, which is often exaggerated in producing elaborate and highly publicized outfits inspired by the evening’s theme in a broader cultural context.
The event is organized by the fashion and glamor magazine Vogue, a main pillar of the fashion industry. The gala is often deemed as “fashion’s biggest night,” where “haute couture intersects with history to create the ultimate cultural moment, all in the name of art.”
This year’s dress code perfectly captures the essence of “Art meets Couture, which explores the centrality of the dressed body.”
While South Indian temple art has existed simultaneously with other commonly known art forms all these years, the historical and sculptural representation from the Chola dynasty and Hoysala Empire period have remained comparatively underrepresented in mainstream Indian American fashion identity, despite their globally recognized artistic excellence.
This gap is widely being discussed after this year’s Met Gala, where multiple Indian elite personalities showcased Indian heritage and history woven into fashion, not as a question of cultural value, but of visibility and translation into contemporary diasporic aesthetics.
For instance, Ananya Birla, who is an Indian entrepreneur and member of Birla business family, wore an outfit that draws inspiration from the statues from medieval India which represent Hindu deities, for the Gala’s after party.
“This couture dress draws inspiration from bronze sculptures in Indian culture and depictions of deities, reinterpreting their characteristic lines and draped forms in a contemporary way” said Ashi Studio, who curated this look for her, through a post on Instagram. “The curves and folds have been carefully studied and translated into the structure of the garment, creating a silhouette that feels both fluid and defined,” the design studio added.
The bronze sculptures of the Chola period, especially depictions of Nataraja, are known for fluid body geometry, jewelry layering, waist ornamentation, symmetrical balance, and rhythmic movement in metalwork.
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In a book called “The Thief Who Stole My Heart: The Material Life of Sacred Bronzes from Chola India, 855-1280,” the author describes the bronzes as “material objects that interacted in meaningful ways with the people and practices of their era. Describing the role of the statues in everyday activities,” which closely resembles the idea behind Birla’s outfit.
According to a paper on “Sculptural Study of the Costumes During the Period of Hoysala,” Hoysala art “preserves one of the most detailed visual histories of medieval Indian fashion, demonstrating that clothing in the period was closely tied to culture, craftsmanship, and social sophistication.”
The paper also notes that textile detailing, design patterns and temple inscriptions were used with motifs to suggest that textile production and stone carving were economically important jobs in the society.
Similarly, designer Mayyur Girota took elements from the art form of Kanjivaram silk sarees, which originated around the 7th century under the Pallava dynasty in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu and layered it with Shola or Sholapith, an eco-friendly art form from India’s West Bengal which is traditionally used to create intricate ceremonial decorations and Durga Puja idol ornaments, to style Diya Mehta Jatia, a London and Mumbai-based fashion stylist and digital influencer, creating an outfit that culturally united East and South India.
While these outfits looked minimal on the grand red carpet of Met Gala when compared to the western representation of the theme by celebrities like Madonna, Emma Chamberlain and Anok Yai, the aesthetics of these Indian representations resonated deeply to the Indian diaspora.
Many other Indian elites paid homage to some of India’s most recognizable artistic legacies, incorporating references to celebrated art forms and culturally iconic motifs into their ensembles.
Karan Johar, an Indian filmmaker and producer, wore a custom outfit designed by Manish Malhotra, which featured Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings such as “Hamsa Damyanti,” “Kadambari,” “Lady with the Peach,” “Arjuna and Subhadra,” and “There Comes Papa,” on the cape.
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Manish Malhotra, Indian fashion designer, wore a piece designed as an ode to Mumbai, the city that made him who he is. His cape featured four different types of embroidery — Dori, Zardozi, Chikankari and Kasab — depicting landmark monuments and resin sculptures, which captured the narratives of the workers that brought it to life. The cape also displayed the signatures of the 50 artisans that worked on this piece.
Similarly, an Indian businesswoman and philanthropist Sudha Reddy, wore a custom Manish Malhotra dress showcasing the 300 years old art form of Kalamkari, with the famous “Tree of Life” motif.
These Indian design traditions naturally parallel many elements already celebrated in global luxury fashion, where metallic structuring, sculpted silhouettes, maximalist jewelry, hand embroidery, architectural draping, and body-contouring ornamentation are fluidly incorporated across a range of styles.
In Indian American cultural spaces, especially weddings, galas, pageants, and South Asian red carpets, representation has often leaned toward generalized “Bollywood glam” with Mughal-inspired embroidery, or North Indian bridal aesthetics. By contrast, South Indian temple-derived visual languages have appeared less frequently in mainstream diaspora branding, despite the sizeable South Indian diaspora in the United States, which is part of the country’s broader Indian American population of more than 5.2 million people as of 2023.
By bringing Indian and especially, South Indian heritage to globally watched platforms like the Met Gala, artists and designers are transforming fashion into a cultural dialogue, creating space for Western audiences to experience the richness of Indian history, craftsmanship, and artistic legacy beyond mainstream or surface-level interpretations.