Met Gala 2016: After, After Hours with Lady Gaga, Madonna and Beyoncé

In 2015, the Met Gala enjoyed an overabundance of after parties. There was, of course, the official after party—then hosted by Yahoo—at The Top of the Standard, but there was also Michael Kors’ at The Mark, Alexander Wang‘s at the Diamond Horseshoe and a very, very late after, after party hosted by Rihanna at the club Up & Down. My, how the tide has turned. After Monday night’s dignified soiree at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the hundreds dining out at the Temple of Dendur only had but a couple of choices to pick from for their after hours rabble-rousing. There was the official after party—this year hosted by Apple—yada yada and although Lady Gaga performed, access was prohibitively limited to everyone except paying ticket holders and their guests, which was said to rob the proceedings of the usual frisson that sparks at the Boom Boom Room whenever very important people rub shoulders with less important people. And so the real entertainment lay elsewhere, first at the Gilded Lily in the Meatpacking District, where Olivier Rousteing was holding court for Balmain. A little past 12:30 a.m., the elfin designer and the entire Kardashian clan—Kim, Kanye, Kris and Kylie—basked in the glory of photographers’ flashbulbs as a rapt crowd watched. Nearby, a bored Cindy Crawford headed for the door. Once the Kardashians got their full day’s supply of camera attention, they eloped, but not before Kylie made sure to greet the new scion on the horizon, Jaden Smith, who had been dancing with Sarah Snyder by themselves. Rousteing expertly moved over to entertain Beyoncé, who was surrounded by bodyguards demanding – in a departure from the Kardashians – on-lookers to refrain from taking the diva’s picture. Well, nothing else to see here – time to move on to nearby Up & Down, where a whole new set of pop goddesses ruled the roost – Gaga, Madonna, Katy Perry. Among them was an interloper trying to lay low in his conspicuous newsboy cap: Leonardo DiCaprio. The recent Oscar winner was not a guest at the Met Gala, but this was an unofficial after party, wasn’t it? And who’s going to tell Leo he’s not welcome at a party full of models?