A Met Gala fan designed a vaccine-inspired outfit complete with a syringe headpiece and Fauci purse

• Brendan McCann has been a fan of the Met Gala for years.
• To celebrate the postponed 2021 event, he designed and modeled a science-themed Met Gala gown.
• He wore the dress made of vaccine cards and Band-Aids with a Fauci purse and a syringe headpiece.

Met Gala Monday passed with no red carpet once again, as the two-part, 2021 event was postponed to September.

All was quiet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the first Monday in May for the second year in a row - aside from Brandon McCann.

McCann, 28, re-created the fun of the Met Gala with a handmade costume fit for the ball.

McCann told Insider he has loved the Met Gala for years

McCann watches coverage of the Met Gala every year, and he told Insider it's his favorite red-carpet event.

"I've always been so over the top and love the shock value of fashion and art," he said of why he likes the Met Gala. McCann also has a background in theater and costume design, so the event appeals to his creative sensibilities.

When the 2020 Met Gala, which was time-themed, got canceled, McCann was self-isolating at his apartment in New York City. As the first Monday in May approached, he became inspired.

"I had this bag of old curtains that I used for a project where I was designing someone's dressing room for a show," he told Insider. "At that point, all we had was time on our hands. So I was like, 'Let me make a dress.'"

McCann made a "time is money" dress using only items he had in his apartment.

He painted on the curtains to make the bulk of the dress, and he used a trash bag for the strap. The clock from McCann's kitchen served as his hat.

"I didn't buy one thing for it," McCann told Insider of the ensemble. He posted a photo of the dress on his Instagram, and it got around 750 likes at the time he shared it.

Because he had so much fun making the 2020 gown, McCann decided to make another dress for 2021.

For his 2021 dress, McCann came up with his own Met Gala theme: science

The Met Gala theme hadn't been announced when McCann started planning his outfit, so he designed a dress based on what was happening in the world around him.

He made a science-inspired ensemble that nodded to both the pandemic and the vaccine rollout.

Once again, McCann used items he had at his parent's home in Long Island to create his outfit, though he also purchased a few items at the dollar store.

He made a vaccine card dress with a Band-Aid bodice.

The skirt was made of poster boards decorated to look like vaccine cards, which McCann hand-painted. They sat over a hoop skirt to give them shape.

He painted craft foam to make the Band-Aid bodice, which he then bedazzled. The Band-Aids were attached to clear, halter-style straps McCann made with a shower curtain liner.

Similarly, he made the syringe headpiece by attaching a plastic table cover to Styrofoam. He bedazzled the plastic to make it look more like an actual syringe, and a retractable back scratcher from the dollar store served as his needle.

McCann told Insider he wasn't originally planning to carry a bag, but when he realized he had leftover fabric from the table cover, he decided to make a Fendi-inspired purse with Fauci written on it, in honor of Dr. Fauci.

He filled the bag with Krispy Kreme doughnuts to nod to the company's free-doughnut promotion for the vaccinated. "I've been talking about that Krispy Kreme vaccination promotion since the day they announced it," he said.

The entire costume cost less than $50 to make.

McCann had a photo shoot in front of the Met in his gown

The day before the first Monday in May, McCann drove into the city with two friends, including his photographer Josh Levinson, for the photo shoot.

McCann couldn't wear the garment in the car since it was too fragile, so he changed into his outfit on the street outside of the museum.

Museum-goers and passersby stared during the photo shoot, but McCann didn't care.

"People were so kind, and they were so respectful," he told Insider. "Nobody was getting in my way or trying to harass me or anything. Everyone was so great."

McCann posted two photos from the shoot on his Twitter on Met Gala Monday.

The tweet went viral, having over 43,000 likes at the time of writing.

"It was really just something that I was doing because I knew I was going to enjoy it, and I knew that other people were going to enjoy it," he told Insider. "But I didn't think this was going to blow up the way that it did."

Since the shoot, McCann has put his science dress into his archives, and he is already thinking about the ensemble he'll make for the fall "In America: A Lexicon of Fashion" Met Gala.

"My style is inherently really campy, and it is a costume gala," he said of his plans for his next ensemble. "So my instinct is to go over the top."

McCann isn't holding his breath for an invitation to the actual Met Gala, but he would of course love to attend.

"Just to be involved in that event in any way would be such an honor," he told Insider, joking that he'd vacuum the carpet or direct traffic. "If one thing did come from this, that would be such a dream come true."

You can follow McCann on Twitter, and you can see more of Levinson's work here.