This past May, Teyana Taylor made jaws drop with her Met Gala look. "I immediately thought of André Leon Talley, the ultimate Black dandy who loved nothing more than to dress in a dramatic cape," Marie Claire fashion editor Lauren Tappan wrote at the time.
Speaking to editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike for the cover of Marie Claire's Changemakers issue—an interview also recorded for Ogunnaike's podcast "Nice Talk"—Taylor opens up about working on the look with the legendary Carter.
"Honestly, I am very humble and I’m very modest when it comes to speaking about myself," she says.
"But like, when you get to work with the Ruth E. Carter, if you thought for one second, I thought that outfit was going to be anything less than amazing. Like, baby, if I wasn’t invited to the Met, I was sneaking on that carpet and I was getting Best Dressed." (Of course the multi-hyphenate star made it onto Marie Claire's Best Dressed list.)
"When you’re working with the Ruth E. Carter, to understand the amount of love and detail that went into that, you already should have known that Ruth was going to come through," Taylor says. "Every bit of praise that we’ve received is exactly how it was supposed to be. And now I say that with all cockiness."
Teyana Taylor wearing Ruth E. Carter at the 2025 Met Gala.
The singer, dancer, actress, and self-described "lover girl" is absolutely not done dipping her toe in the world of fashion, with many red-carpet moments lined up for the fall.
"My God, my fall is amazing," she tells us. "I’m working with some designers, but also I’m working on original pieces that I’m going to design. Let’s just see where that takes me, because maybe that can be the start of my own actual line."
