The daily gossip: Recapping the best and the worst of the 2021 Met Gala

Though it was rumored to be the year of the influencer, it was the athletes who shined at this year's Met Gala. Naomi Osaka led the team in Louis Vuitton as a co-chair. Emma Raducanu was a first-time attendee, just two days after her historic victory at the U.S. Open. Simone Biles proved once again she is stronger than everyone else by wearing an 88-pound Athleta dress. Fellow Olympian Sunisa Lee dressed as her gold medal, and gymnast Nia Dennis casually performed a floor routine on the carpet. Other standouts include the Williams sisters, Megan Rapinoe, Sha'Carri Richardson, and Lewis Hamilton. Even non-athletes wanted in on the trend: Ciara cosplayed as her football-star hubby, and Grimes may or may not have been inspired by the fencers to bring a sword.

The 2021 Met Gala red carpet was aflutter on Monday evening with well-dressed teens, influencers, and politicians, but one regular was missing: Nicki Minaj. The rapper fired off a series of tweets earlier in the evening revealing that she hasn't been vaccinated against COVID-19 and therefore wouldn't be attending the Met Gala, slamming the event's vaccine requirement to the applause of the likes of Fox News' Tucker Carlson. Minaj additionally tweeted a baseless claim that COVID-19 vaccines cause impotence, insisting this happened to her "cousin's friend" — the way all good urban legends start. "His testicles became swollen," she claimed. "His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding." Uh-huh, sounds definitely real.

The Met Gala attendees made their share of subtle political statements on Monday night — and not so subtle, too. Model and actress Cara Delevingne fell into the latter category, wearing a bulletproof white vest emblazoned with the phrase "Peg the Patriarchy," which was designed by Dior's Maria Grazia Chiuri. "If someone doesn't know what this means, you're gonna have to look it up," Delevingne told Vogue correspondent Keke Palmer, though she added "it's about women empowerment, gender equality — it's a bit like, 'stick it to the man.'" Which is all well and good, but as one Twitter user pointed out, "I'm pretty sure Cara Delevingne's family is the patriarchy," citing a now-revised Wikipedia article (backed up by Betches and Page Six) that lists her notable ancestors, including an English Heritage chairman, a baronet, a socialite, a viscount and viscountess, two Lord Mayors of London, and a lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret.

When Kim Kardashian showed up to Kanye West's Donda listening party in an upscale Morphsuit, it was, evidently, the dawn of an era. Since then, she's worn several iterations of the same look, including for her arrival to New York, at the Met Gala (courtesy Balenciaga), and at Justin Bieber's after party. She hasn't given a reason for the sudden surge in face covering and black clothing — is she mourning her marriage? shedding her past self? tired of choosing outfits? just nervous about COVID? Who knows. Stay tuned to see if Kardashian will ever wear color again.

In what is perhaps the least surprising news of the entire Met Gala, Grimes walked the beige carpet on Monday night accessorized with a giant sword. "I mean, I feel like it started as a Dune thing," said the mother of X Æ A-Xii. She added that "we were working with the Dune movie people" who had initially planned to "hire me as a professional fan, or like, an influencer or something" but with nothing actually formalized, Grime's Met Gala look was technically "Dune-esque." As for the sword, it's "not really a one-handed situation," Grimes admitted, further explaining that the weapon was forged from a Colt AR-15A3. "It's from these people who are getting people's [guns] who don't want to have their automatic rifles anymore, and are melting them down and making them perfect replicas of medieval swords, which I think is just so cool," Grimes said. "I think it's a beautiful thing."