Doja Cat Is Unrecognizable Dressed as Karl Lagerfeld’s Cat Choupette for the Met Gala 2023

To ensure the overall look would read “more beauty, less costume,” makeup artist Ernesto Casillas chose to keep a light hand. “We wanted the makeup to read feline, but still soft and pretty,” says Casillas. “Doja and I agreed that we needed to do a thin and delicate cat-inspired eyeliner,” he says of using Charlotte Tilbury’s The Feline Flick liquid eyeliner, “which is coincidentally the perfect name” and matched her lip color to her faux nose as a “small but endearing detail” using Charlotte Tilbury’s Pillow Talk collection on lips and cheeks. 

Then, there were the jewels. “On top of the beauty, we decorated her with diamonds from Messika,” adds Alan Nelson, who nods to the French artist and designer Erté as the inspiration for the jewel on Doja Cat’s third eye. “I mean, there’s a million-dollar diamond that’s just sitting in the middle of her forehead,” he says with a laugh. “It’s the most major art moment of the year. It’s her first Met Gala, and we need this to be bigger than what we’ve done in the past,” he says of the gone-viral beauty moments they’ve been creating with artists like Laurel Charleston over the past year. After seeing herself in tonight’s final look, Alan Nelson saw Doja Cat register the next-level potential in real time: “She looked at me, giggled, and asked ‘Are you excited?’”

Met Gala 2023: See Every Celebrity Arrival, Read the Latest Stories, and Get Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Here

See All of the Celebrity Looks From the Met Gala 2023 Red Carpet: