On Monday evening, the 2026 Met Gala will be a high-fashion affair to remember. All eyes will be on the custom designs coming down the red carpet—but even more focus will be put on the bodies wearing them. This year’s event, after all, celebrates the Met’s new spring Costume Institute exhibition, “Costume Art,” spotlighting “the centrality of the dressed body.”
While we can expect all of the celebrity looks to cleverly explore the relationship between clothing and the human form underneath, there is quite simply no group that can better serve body (or the illusion of one) than drag queens. So, what better moment than now to look back on where it all began?
Over the years, drag queens—be it fashion queens, comedy queens, or even quirky queens—have all perfected the art of body-forward dressing. In their way, these drag queens are echoing certain themes expressed in this year’s Met exhibition, like a padding-filled pair of tights by Harry Pontefract of British label Ponte, the bodies refigured by corsets and bustles in a section on the abstracted body, or clothes designed to subvert the “normal” curves of the human form in a section on the reclaimed body.
Through their transformative padding techniques, in which they sport specialized foam or silicon inserts as an underlayer, drag queens have found masterful ways to build their signature silhouettes, leveraging padding to convey the type of womanly curves they want to present to the world, and, thus, the woman they want to be. “When I started to proportionize from my body, it unlocked an external response,” says Jimbo, a top Drag Race and All Stars alumni. “Your body is your visual fingerprint: When I’m padded and feeling myself, I’m taking up more space—and that feels good and sexy to me.”
