Every athlete’s Met Gala look, reviewed by a dad who shops at Old Navy

I don’t really get the Met Gala. At this point in my life I have accepted I’m just not cool enough to understand why people really get invested in the avant-garde, high-concept fashion of celebrities walking the red carpet. It’s a cultural event that ranks somewhere between “Royal Wedding,” and “Depp/Heard Trial” in terms of things I care about.

That said, it’s an important cultural touchstone. Every year I look at the Met Gala photos to learn about celebrities I didn’t know exist. I’ll often have a separate tab open for Googling their names, just so I can feel like I’m a part of the cultural zeitgeist. These are the people I had to search from this year’s celebs at the Met Gala, because I had no idea who they were:

I made up four names on this list, and I guarantee you can’t tell me which ones without Googling, because nothing is like the Met Gala for unearthing celebrities nobody has ever heard of.

There are lots of athletes who attend the gala each year too, and I’m always curious to see what they are wearing. This year I decided to put my fashion knowledge to the test and give you the kind of fashion reviews which can only be cultivated by the father of a nine-year-old who does the majority of his clothes shopping at the Old Navy around the corner from my house.

Three weekends ago my daughter went to a birthday party where the kids got to paint canvases and sling washable paint at each other. This is what she looked like after the party.

Joe Burrow is wearing an outfit I’d expect Roger Moore to wear as James Bond in the “morning after” scene of sleeping with a woman with a name that’s an extremely inappropriate, barely-veiled sexual innuendo like “Vulva Molloy.”

This is one of the assassins who was trying to kill John Wick in John Wick when they learned about the bounty.

How I imagine people dress in Star Wars for a Jedi wedding.

I have so many questions. Obviously the bubbles attached to the dress aren’t really bubbles — so what are they? Is this like wearing a dress made of bubble wrap when you sit down in a chair? Can you sit down in this dress? Are they hard, like sitting in clothing made out of the balls from a ball pit? This confuses me too much, and as an old I don’t appreciate being confused.

It’s a nice suit. The real story is that there are no photos of Carson Hocevar in the athlete section of Getty Images, presumably because the photographers at Getty are as surprised as you are that a NASCAR driver went to the Met Gala.

I don’t know about y’all, but I think they’re starting to introduce too many heroes into The Boys.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

The Rock never skips leg(wear) day. He has on pants, a kilt, a cape, and long boots. Too much leg attire and it looks exhausting to pee while wearing.

This dress is fine. Alysa Liu gets a 10/10 for being Alysa Liu. These are my rankings, and I make the rules.

I bet someone out there is losing it over a hat that looks like a futuristic planter paired with witch gloves. I am not that person.

How does one settle on “pile of fabric that evokes a dress”?

Lindsey Vonn out here looking like a big old block of blue cheese. I love blue cheese.

This looks stylish and comfortable. I’m here for it.

I’m convinced the Met Gala is the only formal event in the world where you can forget a critical clothing item like “shirt,” and still pull it off.

Dress for the job you want. The job is “tertiary character in the next Thor movie.“

There are not many times we get to say “Venus did it better than Serena,” but this was one of them.

This both feels like the most glamorous dress, and the least at the same time. I was really obsessed with Project Runway in college, and I think a designer would get skewered for the shape of this gown.

I choose to think this is an ode to all the teams Russ has played for. The wings on the lapels are an ode to the Seahawks. The boots represent the Broncos. The branch shapes on the wrist represent football being in the veins of Pittsburgh. The watch is from his time with the Giants, because he watched Jaxson Dart take his career away.