Serena Williams showed up twice before fashion’s biggest night out, first at Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos’s pre-Met Gala party on May 2 and then at Anna Wintour’s pre-Met Gala dinner on May 3, using both appearances to put her own stamp on the week before Monday’s Met Gala.
At the dinner, Williams wore a fiery red custom LaQuan Smith gown with a bold high slit, black pointed-toe heels and a black clutch, while wearing her blonde hair down. After the Bezos party, where she appeared in a gray sculptural Magda Butrym minidress with an intricate pleated design, she joked on Instagram: “Is the night even worth talking about if you didn’t get a rip in your stockings?”
The two outings fit the pattern of a woman who has treated the Met Gala as more than a red-carpet stop. Williams co-chaired the event in 2019 and announced her second pregnancy on the Met Gala carpet in 2023, turning the annual fashion spectacle into part runway, part family album. She has been married to Alexis Ohanian since 2017 and has two daughters, Olympia and Adira, and has said that after marriage and family, she realized there was “so much more to life” than career alone.
That personal shift has been part of her public remarks for years. Last November, Williams said it could be difficult to leave her daughters for a night out and that she keeps a nighttime routine with them every day, adding that “being their mom is my favorite place to be” and that she is with them 363 out of 365 days a year. The Met Gala circuit this week sits right inside that balance: a rare set of evenings out, timed around fashion’s most visible stage.
The timing also carries a family note. Venus Williams is one of the co-chairs of the 2026 Met Gala, and Serena Williams wrote on Instagram that she “couldn’t be prouder” to stand by Venus’s side as she married Andrea Preti last December. On Monday, Venus Williams and Naomi Osaka hit the red carpet for the annual event, while Serena’s pre-party appearances read as both preparation for the main night and support for her sister. For Serena, the answer to why these stops mattered is simple: she was showing up in style, yes, but also showing up for Venus.