Celebrity Style
10 Years Ago, Rihanna Freed The Nip At The Met Gala After-Party
The risqué look is arguably her most daring Met Gala outfit of all time.
The hourly countdown to the 2025 Met Gala is officially on. Naturally, people are in a frenzy, trying to guess which A-listers will likely attend and what they’ll wear to tonight’s big event. One of the names in the ether is Rihanna. Fortunately, the odds of her showing up are pretty good.
Apart from her partner, A$AP Rocky, co-hosting the famed event this year, she’s also an undisputed Met Gala queen. Her looks through the years have gone down as some of the chicest in the event’s history and have been showcased in galleries and exhibits as literal works of art. She’s such a stalwart of the event that even when she skips it, she’s still immortalized in VFX. Remember in 2022 when she was pregnant and passed on the fête and, instead, Vogue rendered her as a towering statue among the museum’s other storied artifacts? Because I do.
As style savants wait with bated breath to find out whether she will be ascending the museum’s iconic steps, take a walk down memory lane to one of her most memorable outfits that lives rent-free in my mind.
Rihanna’s Yellow Showstopper
The Grammy winner made headlines in 2015 when she attended the prestigious soirée. Leaning into the theme, “China: Through the Looking Glass,” she wore a fur-trimmed robe with an exaggeratedly long train by Guo Pei.
In a vivid shade of yellow, which perfectly matched her gilded headpiece, necklace, and shoes, she was a vision against the museum’s red carpet-lined steps.
Her Nipply After-Party Look
Though her yellow look has gone down in fashion’s hall of fame, her after-party look was what’s been emblazoned in my brain for a decade. She threw her own post-gala shindig (of course) and showed everyone up with her look: a textured all-black number. On top, she wore a sheer off-the-shoulder piece — sans bra — with the sleeves lined with fur (a nod to her earlier robe).
She paired the look with silk pants, matching fur-trimmed gloves, and a thick velvet choker.
While no one would bat an eyelash these days if anyone freed the nip, back in 2015, it was still extremely controversial style move. Nothing, however, is off limits to Rihanna. She’s been at the forefront of the style, rocking the breast-forward to red carpet events, including the 2014 CFDA Fashion Awards. By leaning into the same daring ethos for the 2015 Met Gala festivities, she practically paved the way for the nipply looks that followed. A true trailblazer.
