She made her name with the sort of subtly sexy cashmere knits and just-so jeans that add up to viral street-style moments, but tonight Cate Holstein’s Khaite made its debut on the world’s most-watched red carpet at the Met Gala 2022. Holstein dressed her friend, model Lily Aldridge, in a custom gown for the event, finished with a sweeping train and embellished with no fewer than 170,000 crystals.
“It’s a beautiful moment, and I’m so honored,” Aldridge told Vogue over the phone from her Nashville home on the eve of the gala. The former Victoria’s Secret Angel met Holstein, who was still a student at Parsons School of Design at the time, when she moved to New York to work as a model at 18. “We were in this very close knit circle in New York almost 20 years ago, when she was just starting out,” she explained, adding that the two women had been reminiscing about the early days of their friendship while Lily’s Met look was coming together. “We’ve been trying to remember exactly how and when we met! We think it was through our mutual friend [stylist and consultant] Vanessa Traina.”
All these years later, seeing a Khaite gown take the spotlight on the biggest night on the fashion calendar feels like a full circle moment for both women, who each went on to carve out incredibly successful careers from those early days in Manhattan. “I’m such a huge fan of Cate, to get to wear her design to the Met Gala is so exciting,” Lily said. “I remember seeing her first designs when she was still at Parsons. I keep a lot of special pieces in my archive for my children, and I’m sure I have one of those original dresses in there.”
Holstein agreed that dressing Lily – a personal friend and one of the brand’s most longstanding and loyal supporters – makes the milestone all the more special. “For me, for Khaite and for New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a revered place,” the designer told Vogue, “a repository of culture and creativity… It’s a night for the museum and the fashion industry to shine. Dressing a guest for the first this year is made all the more memorable by the inclusion of a Khaite piece in the museum’s “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” exhibition,” she added.
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