Soft armour, pert nipples: how London design team made Kim Kardashian’s Met Gala breastplate | Met Gala 2026
At Monday’s Met Gala, it inevitably fell to Kim Kardashian to deliver the evening’s biggest jolt. One of the few celebrities to straightforwardly interpret the “fashion is art” dress code – which focused on how the dressed and undressed human body is the through-line in most works of art – she decided to forgo her usual role as a walking billboard for a major fashion house and instead arrived in an orange fibreglass breastplate created by a small east London art duo and a car bodyshop in Kent. “Good art should start conversation, and Kim did exactly that,” says 61-year-old Patrick Whitaker, half of the design practice Whitaker Malem, who made the breastplate just weeks before the gala. “She was very clear on wanting a breastplate, very clear on the car body finish. And I think she was nervous really. She understands the competition.” She also found out from Anna Wintour that five other people were wearing breastplates, including her half-sisters, Kylie and Kendall Jenner. Soft armour and pert nipples might have been the themes …
