Celebrities graced the 2018 Met Gala on Monday night wearing clothes and accessories that highlighted this year's theme, "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination" and Jared Leto especially turned heads for dressing up like Jesus Christ in a suit from Gucci.
Leto's suit, designed by Gucci's Alessandro Michele, was speckled with a floral brocade stole similar to those that Catholic priests wear for mass. He complemented his outfit with a dainty pink pussy bow scarf and topped his look with a golden crown that sat over his shoulder-length hair.
As photos from the Met Gala made its way online, fans could not help but comment that Leto looked a lot like Jesus Christ but fashion fans also loved Rihanna's Pope-inspired wardrobe from Christian Dior's John Galliano.
STOP JARED LETO IS ACTUALLY JESUS #metgala pic.twitter.com/z4Tfd5vmpA
— peter warrior erin (@tqmhollands) May 7, 2018 " data-caption="null" data-credit="null">Katy Perry arrived at the Met Gala with huge angel wings, while Ariana Grande's dress was inspired by The Last Judgment from the Sistine Chapel. Sarah Jessica Parker, on the other hand, wore a headdress featuring the Nativity.
But while some people criticized the outfits paraded by the stars, with some Christians on social media slamming this year's theme as "blasphemous." The hashtag #Myreligionisnotyourcostume also trended on the night of the fashion event.
"I think the theme could have been done well, but this time it was poorly executed and mostly used as mockery," one Catholic Twitter user commented. Another said that celebrities wearing crosses and other Catholic-inspired wardrobe aren't even Catholic therefore the whole event was sacrilegious and disrespectful.
TV personality Piers Morgan was particularly scathing in an opinion piece for the Daily Mail in which he suggested that an Islam- or Jewish-themed Met Ball would have met with a very different reaction.
"If the Met Gala was Islam or Jewish-themed, all hell would break loose – so why was it OK for a bunch of flesh-flashing celebrities to disrespect MY religion?" he asked.
The Met Gala, also known as the Costume Institute Gala, is a fundraising event to help New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute. This year's theme was in recognition of "religious artistic production" in art pieces like sculpture, paintings and architecture, according to the press release.
