Irina Shayk Just Defied Expectations and Wore Flats on the Met Gala Red Carpet

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(Image credit: Getty Images)

The carpet's been rolled out, the tables bought, and the looks finalized (probably months ago). Unless you've been on a social-media hiatus all week, you probably already know the event I'm referring to is the Metropolitan Museum of Art's annual Met Gala. For one night a year, the biggest names in fashion assemble on the steps of New York City's most beloved museum. And this year, they'll all be wearing looks that celebrate Karl Lagerfeld, the late designer who worked at Chanel, Fendi, Balmain, and Chloé, among others. And since today's date happens to be the first Monday in May, all the excitement is going down tonight. 

No matter how much predicting we do ahead of the red—or in this case, off-white—carpet, attendees at the Met Gala always find ways to surprise us. Case in point: Irina Shayk stepped in front of cameras this evening wearing not stilettos or platforms but an extremely understated pair of ivory-colored flats. And good for her. We're all about prioritizing comfort. To offset her more casual choice of shoes, the supermodel wore a draped silk gown from Yohji Yamamoto's spring/summer 1998 collection and layers of Ana Khouri chokers. After all, the key to a great ensemble is balance. See her look for the 2023 Met Gala below. 

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(Image credit: Getty Images)

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(Image credit: Getty Images)

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(Image credit: Getty Images)

Coming up next: The 2023 Met Gala Theme Explained

Senior Fashion Editor

Eliza Huber is a New York City–based fashion editor who specializes in trend reporting, brand discovery, and celebrity style. She joined Who What Wear in 2021 after almost four years on the fashion editorial team at Refinery29, the job she took after graduating with a marketing degree from the University of Iowa. She has since launched two monthly columns, Let's Get a Room and Ways to Wear; profiled the likes of Dakota Fanning, Diane Kruger, Katie Holmes, and Sabrina Carpenter for WWW's monthly cover features; and reported on everything from the relationship between Formula One and fashion to the top trends from fashion month, season after season. Eliza now lives on the Upper West Side and spends her free time researching F1 fashion imagery for her side Instagram accounts @thepinnacleoffashion and @f1paddockfits, running in Central Park, and scouring eBay for '90s Prada and '80s Yves Saint Laurent.