- Selena Gomez discussed her 2018 Met Gala self-tanning blunder in a recent video for Vogue.
- The tan got “darker and darker.” By the time Gomez noticed, she was “completely orange.”
- The actress recalled thinking: “I’m going to get eaten alive about this.”
Selena Gomez spoke about her fake-tan beauty blunder at the 2018 Met Gala, explaining that she was “completely orange” by the time she realized her tanning lotion had darkened.
Ahead of the annual fête, themed “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” Gomez was getting ready in her custom Coach gown and decided to “add some color” to her look, the 29-year-old Rare Beauty founder told Vogue on Tuesday.
“We put on some of this tanning lotion and it looked really beautiful and very even,” she began, continuing, “As the evening kept going on, it’s getting a little darker and darker and I didn’t notice it.”
Neilson Barnard/Getty Images
By the time the “Only Murders in the Building” star arrived at the Met Gala, which she described as “one of the most prestige, beautiful events,” she said she was too preoccupied trying to “look all beautiful” on the red carpet to do a status check on the self-tanner.
Only when Gomez sat down at her table inside of The Metropolitan Museum of Art did she finally have a moment to do a once-over of the photographs paparazzi had taken moments prior.
“I look at a photo of myself when I sit down, and I’m completely orange,” she recalled. “I was like, ‘This is going to be terrible because I’m going to get eaten alive about this.'”
Dimitrios Kambouris/MG18/Getty Images
The red-carpet photos did lead to a round of memes and online jokes, but rather than getting upset about the mishap, Gomez poked fun at herself. As she was leaving the event, she had her security team record a video of her running away in her gown.
“My first reaction was just to get the hell out of there. I’m running to my car and I’m literally hauling ass to get to my car,” she explained.
Gomez posted the video on Instagram and disabled comments, captioning it: “Me when I saw my pictures from MET.”
Gomez, who is a Coach ambassador and wore the brand to the 2017 Met Gala as well, said she wanted the look to “capture Queen Esther” in the Bible. “I admire her strength, and that’s what I wanted it to feel like,” she told Liza Koshy, adding that the event is “bigger than what we wear.”
According to E! News, Gomez put her own personal touch on the outfit by requesting to have her favorite Bible verse, Proverbs 31:30, sewn onto the ribbon of her dress and onto her purse.
The quote reads: “A woman who fears the lord is a woman who shall be praised.”