Talk about a challenge. The Met Ball is fashion's smartest party – and this year, the theme was punk. Here's our guide to who ripped up the red carpet, and who was a rebel without a cause
Princesses of punk: those who got it right
Carey Mulligan
Carey's ice-cool take on punk chic makes everyone else look a bit try-hard and overdone. The cutouts on this Balenciaga catwalk dress are fittingly angular, rather than cheesily peekaboo. The safety pin and the slicked hair are nicely edgy, balanced by the cocktail hemline and elegant shoes. As for the scowl, and the cool girl's disdain for the lipsticky trappings of an evening bag: this is not just fashion, it is method acting.
Cara Delevingne
Ultra-plunge long gown with a pap-friendly glimpse of sideboob: yawn, right? Nope, not when Burberry rustle you up a special number with the top half armoured in tiny gold spikes, which might be a little hedgehoggy on a more rounded body but which combine with that minxish Cara attitude and insanely willowy figure to make punk magic. The piled-on earrings, rings and necklaces and bad-girl plait are all working here. They don't call her the new Kate Moss for nothing, you know.
Sarah Jessica Parker
It's the first rule of parties: go hard or go home. SJP has gone hard, with a gold and black Philip Treacy mohican headpiece and thigh-high tartan velvet boots accessorising her Giles Deacon dress. This grand silk taffeta ballgown in a splashy anarchic print has a punk soul, taking the fabric and silhouette typical of Upper East Side eveningwear and subverting it. If we have a slight quibble, it's that the tan is verging on MIC.
Sienna Miller
Who would have predicted that Burberry would be so good at red-carpet punk? Sienna's punk biker and bleach-white dress are a mix of hardcore attitude and clean, simple silhouette and colour palette which totally works. Also, we always love to see a girl get her post-baby party mojo back, and if we're not very much mistaken she's got the look of a girl about to hit up the cocktails. One problem: so matchy-matchy with Cara D that, side by side, the effect becomes ever-so-slightly Little Mix.
Anne Hathaway
A true movie star knows how to use the red carpet to make a statement, and that's what Hathaway did in vintage Valentino. First, she turned that poor-little-me Les Mis urchin cut into something vampish and edgy by dying it Debbie Harry blonde. Second, she showed how incredible her va-va-voom body is when she's living on the Fantine diet of teaspoons of baked porridge. Third, she showed that being upstaged by her own nipples at the Oscars has in no way cowed her into making safe fashion choices. Respect.
Carine Roitfeld
The front row's very own Iggy Pop lookalike is the true punk of them all, of course. Not for Carine the box-ticking safety-pin/stud approach. Roitfeld is the only A-lister rebel enough not to turn up in some version of an evening dress: instead, she wears a Givenchy sweatshirt with a floor-length, polka-dot sheer skirt. Best of all is the cartoon-pyjama Bambi cartoon motif, which – along with the signature undone hair and makeup – makes Roitfeld look as if she's spent the afternoon lying on her hotel bed watching DVDs and eating popcorn, rather than being primped into oblivion in a salon.
More chaos than couture: those who got it wrong
Madonna
Oh, Madge: this should have been your perfect invitation. Dress up. Dress Punk. Show them how it's done. No need to get some minion to call the fashion publicists because you already own this look. So maybe it was over-confidence, possibly it was the fishnets, perhaps the tartan. But somehow the elements conspired to make her less Givenchy more Dragon's Den. Worst are the cerise shoes, which suggest Madonna's punk is now studied rather than natural.
Beyoncé
No matter how many times I look for the good in Beyoncé's dress I keep coming back to the fact that it looks like the bedlinen from some corrupt regime dictator's pad. Worse: it's downright unflattering – on Beyoncé, for goodness sake. Even the intriguing fact that matchy-matchy thigh boots and elbow gloves bring chaos rather than harmony to the look can't rescue it. Bey's image will get over it, but it isn't reflecting well on the usually faultless Riccardo Tisci of Givenchy is it?
Kim Kardashian
Frankly, with the passive-aggressive peony print, the high neckline and the pray-that-they're-gloves-and-not-sleeves, it's tricky to see what's what: where does the bump begin and end? Even so, it's hard not to be charmed by a woman who loves fashion so much that she refuses to let her pregnancy dictate her wardrobe. Why should she roll over in a wafty empire line, eh? It's another Givenchy, which suggests that Tisci was deliberately aiming for the chaotic end of the dressing spectrum. Too much of a coincidence if not, right?
Florence Welch
Legend has it that when the ravens leave the Tower of London, disaster cometh. So the fact that they all showed up on Florence's Met dress should make us all a little fearful, no? She looks agitated – but then feathered boobs don't make for a relaxing night and nor does a fringed leather cape which pretty much demands you spend the whole shebang with your hands on your hips. The down hair and black nails conspire to make the look a bit Gothic Cowgirl. Givenchy again. Just sayin'.
Katy Perry
This dress isn't as mad as it thinks it is, which is kind of the problem. The Dolce and Gabbana catwalk look does make the singer look like a walking, sparkling pre-Reformation rood screen and the crown headpiece has a touch of the Courtney Loves about it. Which is mad and punkish in theory, but on Perry – who is a little "I'm a bit mad me" when it comes to her wardrobe anyway – the overall effect is a bit flat. On someone more classy, this could have been Punk. Maybe.
Debbie Harry
You would have to be heartless not to want this to work, but blind to argue that it did. What with the Vegas casino bag, the jacket worthy only of a Britain's Got Talent contestant, the Kensington Market shoes and the novelty Ladies' Day headpiece, Harry's look is chaotic in the extreme. Her red-carpet offering silently sums up the enormous gulf between the reality of living the punk dream and showing up at fashion's poshest party and looking like a high-end punk princess. Love that she kept the RayBans on though.
Misread the invitation: those who played it straight
You've got to be in it to win it, girls. It's all very well having your own personal style and all, but showing up at a gala to celebrate the
legacy of punk in a polite little frock is, frankly, a bit rude. Show them
Sex Pistols some respect, surely. Sure, Gwyneth's dress has racy sheer
panels, but she's GP – she doesn't leave the house without a sheer panel,
so this doesn't even count as trying. Jennifer Lawrence reprises her Oscar triumph, without considering that "if it aint broke don't fix it" is about
as anti-punk a motto as it gets. Kate Upton is all just-another-red-carpet
and there's an Olsen in a vintage dressing gown AGAIN. What about hostess
Anna Wintour in floral, floor-length Chanel? Hmmm. Well, I guess it's her party, and some people don't need safety pins through their ears to look
terrifying.
JCM