Behind the Mask: Gwendoline Christie and collaborator Gillian Wearing on her 2026 Met Gala look.
Ahead of her 2026 Met Gala appearance, we caught up with Gwendoline Christie and collaborator Gillian Wearing to talk through the inspiration behind her look and the meaning behind her show-stopping mask accessory.
Can you tell us about your look and your collaboration with Gillian Wearing?
GWENDOLINE CHRISTIE: “I am wearing a dress by Giles Deacon, headpiece by Stephen Jones, custom shoes by Herbert Levine (designed by Katie Grand), and carrying a mask of my face by Gillian Wearing. My hair is by Adir and make-up by Jenna Kuchera & Pat McGrath; skin is by Joanna Vargas. Many influences went into the creation of this look. We started with paintings by Sargent, who has always been one of Giles’ inspirations, and photographs by Madame Yevonde—to whom I recently realised I am related, delighted by this discovery! There’s a photograph by her called ‘Mask’ in the National Portrait Gallery—Rosemary Chance holding a painted mask—the effect is surreal, delicate and technicolour. It stayed with me and I kept thinking about how I wanted to wear a mask to shield me from my vulnerabilities, how I use them in my own work to realise my inner world, and then Giles said, ‘What about a mask by Gillian?’”
‘Mask’ Rosemary Chance photographed by Madame Yevonde, 1938.
(Via National Portrait Gallery)
GWENDOLINE CHRISTIE: “On first discovering Gillian Wearing's work in 1993, ‘Signs That Say What You Want Them to Say and Not Signs That Say What Someone Else Wants You to Say’, it really changed my perspective of what art could be, and her work with masks, especially ‘Between Mask and Mirror’ (2017), struck my mind and has never left. Gillian and I have mutual friends, but I never in a million years expected her to be willing to create a reimagining of ‘Between Mask and Mirror’—with my own face. But she did! The conversation was always easy and landed on the same page; it was effortless. I expressed to Gillian how I wanted to hide, to display a smoother version of my own self, the face perhaps I wished I had, the masks we all wear, the duality of our feelings at this time in the world, how we survive. We also looked at the painting of the mask, reminded of the Rainbow Portrait of Elizabeth I; the messages embedded in her dress about power, stealth and spies inspired me to conjure the Mask of Youth, a very pale face with red drawn lips. The make-up then was, of course, toxic and slowly killed the wearer.
The duality of the mirror and the mask excited me—am I shielding or reflecting the world?”
Can you tell us about your mask made for Gwendoline’s Met Gala look?
GILLIAN WEARING: “Gwendoline reached out to me with a request to recreate a mask piece similar to the one I had made in a photograph in 2017, titled Through Mask and Mirror. The original work features me wearing a mask of my own face, holding a hand mirror frame through which the mask extends. For this piece, I wanted to have the mirror frame moulded around the mask of Gwendoline’s face, the mask replacing the reflecting component, blending the physical and symbolic roles of both the mirror and the mask. Mirrors reflect who we are, but by merging it with the mask, it suggests that identity is not simply something we reflect; it is also one of transformation, and that identity is much more layered.
Can we ever reflect ourselves, as we are always editing, creating and evolving identity? We are many, many selves. Also, for a great actress like Gwendoline, that relationship is much more pronounced, but it’s something that so many people who are not professional performers are engaging with in the digital age, as faces can be reshaped, filtered, and reimagined; the lines between who we are physically and how we appear digitally blur, and probably change our perception of who we are, especially if someone's images on social media are always filtered—that will be how most people see them in their memories.
I should add that Mark Stirling from Applied Arts was the person who physically made the mask; it was the same company that made my first mask of my face in 2000.
Masks are something I have been interested in since I started working in the 90s. I initially worked with them in 1994, where people confessed on video wearing a mask; it freed them from their physical selves and helped them speak without the weight of how people might perceive them if they saw their real faces.
Gwendoline is an amazing actress, so I am so looking forward to seeing her rock the whole look—she is going to look stunning.”
‘Through Mask and Mirror’, Gillian Wearing, 2017
Can you tell us about the importance of spotlighting artists at the Met
GWENDOLINE CHRISTIE: “It’s exciting to be inspired to find so much meaning!
Working with Gillian is a great privilege; I’ve loved her work, especially about Claude Cahun, for some time, and being integrated so literally with this sculpture into her body of work is thrilling! Her sculpture of suffragette Millicent Fawcett standing in Parliament Square is the first ever statue there of a woman by a woman artist. Photographer Madame Yevonde was also a suffragette and pioneered the use of colour photography—her motto was ‘Be original or die’. Somehow I feel both artists holding hands across the ages.”
GILLIAN WEARING: “I think it makes sense that the Met features art in this year’s concept, since it is a museum that has one of the best art collections in the world. It also has an exceptional costume collection. The gala attendees regularly wear clothes as if they are concepts and/or identities. These are themes that are prevalent in a lot of art too.”
How do you define costume art?
GWENDOLINE CHRISTIE: “My excitement for Andrew Bolton's exhibition at the Met only builds, especially as it’s revealed that a diverse range of body types will be shown as mannequins and we’ll look not only at a spectrum of the body and art, but at what connects us as humans more than divides us.
For me, every day is costume art—clothes can allow us to create new identities—we can be whoever we want to be. And thank goodness.”