Tyla’s ultra-fragile Balmain sand dress didn’t survive the Met Gala 2024

Once she was inside, the gown underwent an on-the-spot alteration.

Like sands through the hourglass, so is Tyla’s Met Gala 2024 sand sculpture dress. So it’s no surprise, then, that the look didn’t survive the night intact.

The 22-year-old South African singer made what may be one of the best Met Gala debuts of all time Monday, wearing a custom Balmain creation made of sand and micro-crystals, fitted to the millimetre based on a cast of her body.

Jamie McCarthy

She wore jewellery by Alexis Bittar and John Hardy, and carried an hourglass-shaped purse by Balmain to further underline her look’s tie-in to the night’s “Garden of Time” dress code.

Tyla’s sand dress was so fragile, in fact, that she had to be carried up the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s steps to avoid her gown’s organza-and-sand train crumbling from the movement.

Taylor Hill

Just like a coastline subjected to the ocean’s tides over time, Tyla’s look changed throughout the night.

Once the star made it inside the gala, Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing, the designer behind the delicate look, posted a video on Instagram of himself kneeling on the floor before Tyla and cutting into her dress, using scissors to slice off the bottom portion of the dress, revising the original floor-length gown and its train to mini length so Tyla could move more freely.

The alteration didn’t appear to be planned: In the comments of the video, Instagram’s director of fashion partnerships Eva Chen, who also seems to have been the clip’s intrepid videographer, wrote, “Hahahaah I’m glad I found those scissors for you.” She also noted that the voice crooning “goooooorgeousssss” in the background of the video is that of Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner.

Apart from its abbreviated length, the dress also gained a few new slits throughout the night of revelry. Call it a design feature: The singer shared photos on Instagram revealing that she ended the evening with a deep slit from her left armpit to her waist, a small notch in the hem by her right thigh, and some splitting in the centre back of the zipper.

Onlookers said that a hotel robe was ready and waiting for Tyla inside the gala just in case things went awry, but in some happy synchronicity, the fashionable erosion further linked arms with the night’s theme.

This story originally appeared on Vanity Fair.