Jennie Kim Crowned the Human Chanel at Met Gala 2025

Jennie Kim’s Met Gala 2025 couture moment reactivates Chanel’s house codes—camellias, pearls, and tailoring—crowning her the maison’s first digital-era muse.

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The Camellia Lady Returns

At the Met Gala 2025 Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, Jennie Kim arrived in a Chanel couture that reinterpreted Karl Lagerfeld’s Fall/Winter 1987 collection. Her off-shoulder jumpsuit featured architectural tailoring softened by feminine lines, black satin subtly gleaming under camera flashes. Pearl cabochons adorned cuffs and buttons meticulously, echoing Coco Chanel’s pioneering use of costume jewellery as refined social provocation.

A structured overskirt lined crisply in white taffeta added disciplined drama, evoking the confident glamour of 1920s garçonne style. Two-tone pumps and an angled hat further reinforced Chanel’s enduring conversation between masculine tailoring and feminine elegance.

Crafted over 330 atelier hours, this ensemble highlighted Chanel’s iconic camellia, a flower that reflected Coco’s belief in understated elegance and subtle defiance of feminine convention due to its clean, scentless form and quiet geometry. Jennie’s contemporary manicure, crowned with Chanel’s camellia ring, enhanced the subtle modernity of her look. 

Beneath Jennie’s hat, her hair was sculpted into an intricate bow that nodded to the ‘Superfine’ theme with both elegance and wit, elegantly blending Jennie's personal charm with Chanel’s timeless aesthetic.

Jennie’s styling resonated globally, generating over 3.5 million mentions on X and earning accolades as best-dressed from Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, and The New York Times. Through this powerful fashion moment, Jennie Kim embodied Chanel’s legacy in every pleat, pearl, and precisely constructed silhouette.

From Icon to Ideology

Flash back to Chanel’s 2025 Home Girls editorial, Jennie Kim used Chanel’s most iconic codes as a language of refined rebellion and liberated femininity. Chanel’s rebellious DNA has always run quietly beneath its immaculate surfaces. In the 1920s, Coco scandalised Paris by cutting corsets from women's wardrobes, offering simplicity and freedom of movement. Later, in 1955, she unveiled the 2.55 bag, revolutionary with its practical shoulder strap transforming women’s handbags from ornamental burden to functional freedom. Today, Jennie’s daring editorial styling dismantled dated codes of modesty with clarity and composure. 

Two white camellias censoring bare skin, referenced Coco Chanel’s preference for minimalism and subversive elegance. Pearl's placement boldly embodies Chanel’s intrinsic dialogue between liberation and rebellion, underscoring the tension between refined jewellery and provocative intent.

A feather-trimmed boucle jacket—left undone—becomes armor and exposure at once. Leather outerwear is paired not with trousers, but translucent monogram tights and cropped cotton knits, collapsing traditional gender cues into instinctive styling. There’s no overt power suit here—only power reframed through intimacy, rawness, and silhouette play. In every frame, Jennie channels the maison’s savoir-faire through tactile contradiction: hard edge meets airy tactility, and rebellion is stitched into softness.

The Muse Walks Chanel Forward

Chanel’s muses have long defined distinct stylistic chapters: Inès de La Fressange in the 1980s embodied Parisian garçonne elegance with nonchalance; Vanessa Paradis brought whimsical romance to the 1990s; and Keira Knightley channeled cinematic refinement through the 2000s, aligning the house with period-drama grandeur.

Jennie Kim marks a generational shift—not a reinterpretation of Chanel ideals, but a re-scripting of their reach. Her 2025 Met Gala appearance generated $15.8 million in Earned Media Value (EMV) with a 3.9% engagement rate, but its true power lay in what followed: fans annotated her look on TikTok, replicated it in stylings from Seoul to São Paulo, and transformed it into an interactive fashion moment. Chanel’s codes were activated, discussed, and recontextualised.

In the Home Girls shoot, Jennie disrupts traditional haute couture codes while remaining fluent in their meaning, teaching Gen Z that couture can be both referential and radical. TikTok edits featuring her looks often include historical footnotes—turning fandom into fashion education.

Her Instagram presence—reaching over 80 million—operates as an editorial ecosystem. In reels, behind-the-scenes stills, and hybrid fashion content, she makes Chanel feel attainable without rendering it ordinary. Through her, the maison achieves rare duality: it becomes closer, but no less coveted.

Jennie expands Chanel’s cultural salience by bridging legacy with new generational desires—styling that resonates with both first-time luxury buyers and seasoned connoisseurs. The camellia now appears not only in couture collections but in fan art, DIY embroidery, K-pop stages, and Pinterest boards. Chanel’s iconography, once seen as exclusive, is now in motion without losing its mystique.

In every deliberate gesture from hair bows sculpted in silk to pearls worn with rebellion—Jennie Kim doesn’t just reflect Chanel’s past. She accelerates its future—transforming brand heritage into a language spoken on red carpets, in music videos, and through millions of curated looks around the world.