Model Adwoa Aboah on Revealing Her Pregnancy at the Met Gala

It’s been a few years since model Adwoa Aboah has attended the Met Gala, and she made her return for her most special carpet yet: The British model debuted her pregnancy on the Met red carpet, in a custom look by H&M.

“I didn’t know what I was going to look like on May 6, and I’m figuring out my body and what I feel like wearing in a whole kind of different way,” Aboah says. “Now, obviously I have absolutely no control over what’s going on. So I did a lot of research on certain red carpet pregnancy looks that I think really work.”

Aboah says she was never a body-con girl pre-pregnancy, and found that remaining true while pregnant. 

“So I wanted to figure out a slightly different way of doing it,” she says.

Inspiration came from the pregnancy styles of Rihanna, Sienna Miller and Emily Ratajkowski.

“I started looking at old Chanel, and I also realized that I wanted to get my bump out as well,” she says. “I was just like, let’s have this kind of Rihanna moment at the Met and get the bump out. I think Sienna’s look at Vogue World, that Schiaparelli top and the skirt was a good influence for me going forward. And that led me on to looking at those insane [Christian] Lacroix skirts, the amazing materials that Karl [Lagerfeld] used back in the day for Chanel and a lot of vintage shapes.”

While she didn’t want to go body-con, she did want to embrace her new baby bump.

“I looked at the bottom half [of vintage looks] and figured out what we could do to accentuate the bump, not drown it, and also make me feel like I wasn’t…I already feel big enough,” Aboah says. “I also wanted to feel comfortable. I didn’t want to feel squished into something.”

“During the design process, we took much inspiration from archival H&M pieces from the 1940s and 1950s as well as flowers and nature for a lot of the details and embellishments,” says Ann-Sofie Johansson, creative adviser and head of womenswear design for H&M.

The team at H&M and stylist Karla Welch worked with Aboah on her look, which featured a red voluminous crop top and full skirt. The top was inspired in part by a vintage Chanel top Welch had, and the team at H&M had crystals they wanted to use, which Aboah says didn’t quite feel like her until they used them as part of the bra piece, peaking out beneath the top. 

“I feel like it’s been a very collaborative effort where everyone’s favorite bit has made it to the end process,” she says.