The Jaw-Dropping Truth About Simone Biles' Met Gala Dress

The Met Gala is a chance for the most elite celebs to ascend the steps at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City looking their most glam. Every year there is a theme for the party, and designers and their celebrity clients work tirelessly to interpret it in the most extreme way possible. In 2021, the theme was "In America: A Lexicon of Fashion," making it more adaptable than some of the ones in past years — let us not forget 2019's "Camp" theme, something many people struggled to properly pull off. 

One star who really showed up was gymnast Simone Biles, who wore a three-piece outfit by Beckett Fogg and Piotrek Panszczyk of Area. The outfit was made up of a skirt covered in Swarovski crystals, a mini dress, and a black catsuit decorated to look like a starry night sky. The catsuit's stars were actually the logo of Athleta, the athleisure brand that Biles represents as a spokesperson. Combining all of those ideas into an outfit — the Gala's theme, the Athleta logo, and Biles' own persona was no easy feat. Panszccyk told Vogue, "Okay, you have your active brand, you have an athlete, and you have a hyper-glamorous label from New York. Where do we all intersect? What's the common ground? And the one word was performance." 

Although the struggle was real, that wasn't the most shocking thing about Biles' look that night. Read on to find out what was. 

The designers used singer Josephine Baker as inspiration for "performance" to link all of the concepts together and to meet the all-American theme for the 2021 Met Gala. The fact that the hand-embellished skirt with Swarovski crystals weighed a whopping 88 pounds — yes, you read that right — is a testament to the fact that Biles truly knows how to perform, whether it's on the mat or the runway. Biles is 4′ 8″ inches tall and weighs just 104 lbs, which means wearing her dress was like a light workout for the athlete.   

"How do I feel in the dress? It's definitely heavy, but I feel beautiful, strong, and empowered," Biles told Vogue. Luckily, the train could detach, so Biles could enjoy herself later in the night on the dance floor in just the mini dress, top half of the skirt, and a catsuit — which was also an homage to her career as a gymnast, as it's basically a leotard. 

"I personally don't think anybody's dress is gonna be better than mine," the athlete continued. "I'm sure everyone feels like that going in, but this is going to be a statement." It was a heavy statement, all around. Let's hope she stretched before walking the red carpet up those iconic stairs.