The supermodel Anok Yai has slammed a crude rumour about a dress she wore to the 2024 Met Gala, after a newspaper report claimed she urinated herself while wearing it.
A report in the Washington Post this week dug into the ins and outs of how guests at the annual fashion event go to the bathroom while wearing what are often unusually designed outfits. One anecdote, shared by stylist Mickey Freeman, involved an unnamed model who wore an “elaborate couture sheer mesh jumpsuit” to the 2024 event, and who required being sewn into it due to a zipper snafu.
During the Met Gala dinner, Freeman recalled, the model was “swept up in the grandeur and excitement [and] completely forgot about the zipper situation”. This caused a hole to be torn into the gown and, Freeman said, “inevitably, [the model’s] bladder decided to remind her”.
The report added that while Freeman declined to name the model, the paper had conducted its own research and determined that “model Anok Yai wore an outfit that matches this description” to the 2024 event.
Posting to her Instagram, Yai firmly denied that she was the model in question.
“I usually stay quiet and keep to myself,” Yai wrote. “But how dare you misalign my character and imply that I ripped my outfit and peed on myself during the Met Gala of 2024! Fact check next time! Are you crazy?!”
Freeman, too, shared a screenshot of the article and denied that the woman he discussed was Yai.
“Nope! It was not Queen @anokyai”, he wrote, while tagging the model.
The 28-year-old Yai is one of the most in-demand supermodels in the world, and in 2018 became the first Black model to open the Prada runway show since 1997, when Naomi Campbell launched the show.
Last year she revealed on her social media that she had been diagnosed with a congenital defect.
“For the past year I’ve been dealing with this silent battle,” Yai captioned the post, which showed various clips of her lying in a hospital bed. “I incidentally found out I had a congenital defect overworking my heart and slowly destroying my lungs.”
Yai was one of a huge number of stars to attend last week’s 2026 Met Gala event, which was controversially sponsored by Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sánchez Bezos.
Yai wore a custom Balenciaga gown inspired by the weeping statues of Sicily. The theme of the night was “Fashion Is Art”, with attendees wearing outfits linked to famous works of art through history.
