Anya Taylor-Joy didn’t attend tonight’s Met Gala, but she was making fashionable appearances elsewhere. The actress shared a video from Mexico earlier today, where she promoted her new film, Furiosa, which opens in theaters later this month. Taylor-Joy’s co-star Chris Hemsworth, however, served as a co-chair at the gala this year.
“Mi primera vez visitando Mexico…¡gracias por el cariño!” (which translates to “My first time visiting Mexico…thanks for the love!”), she wrote in her Instagram caption.
Taylor-Joy made her Met Gala debut in 2018, wearing a shimmery gold gown with puff sleeves by Dolce & Gabbana for the night’s “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion & The Catholic Imagination” theme.
In November, the actress spoke to W about how she chooses her red carpet looks.
“I grew up such a tomboy,” she started. “I never paid attention to clothes until I realized that it was a form of performance art for me—specifically, on the red carpet. I love drama. I love theatricality. I love leaning into a theme. I have a wonderful stylist, Ryan Hastings. We approach it not as, ‘We’re going to be wearing some clothes to this.’ We create. With my hair and makeup team, Georgie Eisdell and Gregory Russell, it’s very much a group enterprise. That’s where we have the most fun: everyone pitches in and we get to try new things. We take it very seriously by not taking it very seriously.
“It’s bizarre that [red carpets are] a huge part of my normal life, but it’s not normal life at all,” she continued. “In which situation do you ever dress yourself to the nines to be photographed by 200 people who are screaming at you? It’s not normal. I have so much more fun thinking of it as—we dress up for this, we feed into the fantasy of it a little bit. Then I get to embody a character.”
Regarding her go-to silhouettes, she said, “I do enjoy dramatic proportions. I did a period piece in which I was corseted every single day—actually, I’ve done two of them, and there were two very, very different corsets. The first time I wore this cone-shaped corset, I was like, I’m going to die. I can’t do this. I don’t know how I’m supposed to act, I can barely stand! And then you start getting used to it. At a certain point on the second period piece I did, I didn’t feel ready to do my day until I was cinched up. It felt like that’s kind of what kept me together. And ever since then, I find a corset strangely reassuring.”