It can be a challenge to make an impression on the Met Gala’s red carpet, especially when the competition includes Diana Ross wearing a feathered overcoat with an 18-foot-long train, Bad Bunny toting a bag fit for a bowling ball, and Rihanna arriving fashionably late — with a baby bump.
But there are spectacles and there are spectacles, and André 3000 fit nicely into the latter category when he showed up to the festivities on Monday night with a grand piano strapped to his back.
“I’m sorry,” the actress Natasha Lyonne said while being interviewed on the red carpet, “there’s a piano coming.”
It was a statement piece and a nifty bit of marketing by André 3000, a rapper and musician whose appearance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Benefit coincided with the release of his new album, “7 piano sketches,” which he described in an Instagram post as “improvisations” and included a drawing of himself in a version of his Met Gala outfit. The instrumental piano album follows one in which he focused entirely on the flute — a sharp departure from his days in the rap duo Outkast.
Beyond the promotion of his new album, his outfit on Monday was carefully planned, both to highlight the event’s theme, which centered on Black style and dandyism, and its dress code, “Tailored For You.”