Lily Gladstone continues to break barriers—whether she’s becoming the first Native American woman to be nominated for an Oscar (thanks to her compelling performance in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon), or spotlighting Indigenous fashion on the red carpet. At tonight’s 2024 Met Gala, Gladstone continued her thoughtful approach to dressing—this time, by choosing an intentional look created by Gabriela Hearst and the Kiowa jeweler Keri Ataumbi. “I am so in love with the Met, and getting to become a part of its history is truly moving,” Gladstone tells Vogue.
The making-of process for Gladstone’s striking outfit began a few months back. Her black, corseted dress and sweeping organza cape were both fully embroidered with recycled silver stars; Ataumbi, a renowned jeweler based out of Santa Fe, hand-crafted each individual star, then arranged them into the shape of nine different constellations onto the garment. “I love the combination of the sleeping beauty and garden of time [themes], articulating itself through a blanket of stars,” says Gladstone. “Since time immemorial, Kiowa, Blackfeet, and other Plains people have always said we come from the stars, and it is where we return to join our ancestors. It is a tapestry of time, under the veil of night.”
The design concept evolved out of early conversations between Hearst and Ataumbi. Growing up, Ataumbi had strong ties to the Great Plains and its starry landscapes, and the jeweler was intrigued by the idea of applying such imagery onto Hearst’s sleek design. “Our ancestors are in the constellations—we’re star people,” says Ataumbi. Mapping out nine different constellations onto a garment was no easy feat. “The idea was to have the constellations as seen from the Great Plains,” says Hearst. To do so, they sourced an image of the Great Plains sky during the summer solstice in June last year; The atelier then blew up the image, printed it out, and laid it out over a form, which Ataumbi used to map out and embroider the constellations. (The Pleiades, for example, are found at the cape neckline, as a custom closure.) “When people look at the stars, they often think about constellations from the western perspective,” says Ataumbi. “I wanted [to represent] how the original peoples look at the stars.”
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