Forever an icon. With the first Monday in May past, many fans of the annual fundraiser ask: Did Rihanna go to the Met Gala?
The Fenty Beauty founder was nowhere to be seen on the steps of the Met Museum. Rihanna, who is in her third trimester of pregnancy, did not attend the 2022 Met Gala. The Anti singer is a regular at the annual gala. She was a co-chair of the 2018 Met Gala, where the theme was Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination. That year, she stunned the carpet with a diamond-studded pope outfit. She went on to make her red carpet couple debut with her boyfriend A$AP Rocky at the 2021 Met Gala. The duo was wearing matching giant outfits with A$AP Rocky in a colorful quilted look, while Rihanna wore an enormous black coat gown with 267 carats of Bulgari jewels.
Though the couple did not attend the coveted event in 2022, Vogue and the Met Museum still wanted to honor the “Umbrella” singer and her pregnancy. Vogue posted a video on their Instagram in the early morning of May 3, 2022, which featured a sculpture of Rihanna as a Greek goddess. The magazine captioned the video with the following: “The statue of “Eirene (The Personification of Peace)” is usually the highest-profile marble goddess @themetmuseum Greco-Roman galleries. But now we’ve got @badgalriri, straight off this month’s Vogue cover.”
Rihanna responded to the tribute in a tweet: “shut down the met in marble! what’s more gilded than that? Lol! Thank you @metmuseum and @voguemagazine for this historic tribute! y’all bad for this one!”
Rihanna announced her pregnancy with A$AP Rocky in January 2021 during a photoshoot on a rainy New York City backdrop. In an interview with Vogue for the May cover, she said “When I found out I was pregnant, I thought to myself, There’s no way I’m going to go shopping in no maternity aisle. I’m sorry—it’s too much fun to get dressed up. I’m not going to let that part disappear because my body is changing.”
While Rih’s pregnancy has been going smoothly, this time period in her life hasn’t been without its own challenges. Her partner A$AP Rocky was arrested on April 20, 2022, at Los Angeles International Airport when the couple was returning from Rihanna’s home country of Barbados. The rapper was charged for involvement in a shooting near Vista Del Mar in California. Rihanna was reportedly stunned and shocked when the arrest happened.