- K-pop group Blackpink's Jennie Kim makes her Met Gala debut on May 1.
- Kim wore a '90s vintage Chanel minidress — a repurposed look from Karl Lagerfeld's collection.
K-pop global sensation Blackpink's Jennie Kim made her Met Gala debut on May 1 in a sweet vintage Chanel minidress, honoring the late designer Karl Lagerfeld.
Her '90s white satin bustier dress, cinched at the waist with a black ribbon and white camellia embellishment, is the Chanel team's reinterpretation of look 164 of Lagerfeld's fall 1990 ready-to-wear collection, per Vogue.
As one of Lagerfeld's last handpicked muses for the house of Chanel, the K-pop "it girl" has been dubbed "Human Chanel" by fans and the media alike, often stunning crowds with expensive, classy Chanel looks.
Kim is also the second Blackpink member to attend the Met Gala, and she picked up some advice from fellow member Rosé, who made her own Met Gala debut in a custom Saint Laurent minidress.
"Rosé, she was here last year, and she told me, 'just have fun,' so that's the plan," Kim told Emma Chamberlain in a livestream interview for Vogue.
Kim isn't the first South Korean celebrity that Lagerfeld took a shine to.
G-Dragon, the leader of BIGBANG, South Korea's top boyband in the 2010s, was one of Lagerfeld's muses, too. In 2016, Lagerfeld shot images of G-Dragon for three separate Vogue Korea covers.
The BIGBANG leader was also spotted at multiple Chanel shows, and was the only Asian celebrity to walk in Lagerfeld's casino-themed Chanel Couture Fall/Winter show in Paris back in 2015.
In 2017, G-Dragon told Dazed what it was like to meet Lagerfeld for the first time — gushing about the fashion designer and calling him a "rockstar."
"I don't remember it perfectly, but it was such an honor. For them, it's like, 'Who's that guy? Who's that Asian kid?' – but I sat front row and everything was special for me," G-Dragon told Dazed.
"Karl is Karl, Chanel is Chanel – period, right? He's on another level. His own zone," the rapper added.
Upon Lagerfeld's death in 2019, G-Dragon also posted a special tribute to him on Instagram — posting an old photo of Lagerfeld, himself, and 20 other celebrities at the 2015 show.
In recent years, a growing number of K-pop stars are being appointed ambassadors of luxury powerhouses as a "calculated move to tap into the booming South Korean market," as previously reported by Insider's Cheryl Teh.