Celebrities and fashion journalists weren't the only ones to add shimmer to the Met Gala red carpet on Monday night. Photographer Brandon Stanton, the man behind viral sensation Humans of New York (HONY), attended the glamorous event, which took place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Logging more than 4.9 million Facebook fans, HONY publishes portraits of New Yorkers who Stanton typically meets on the street. He pairs each photograph with touching, revelatory and often inspiring quotes, which he gathers by interviewing his subjects.
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This time, Vogue invited Stanton off the streets and onto the famous Met steps for the biggest single fashion event of the year. However, Stanton wasn't there to glorify the celebrities everyone else seemed to worship.
"My goal was to keep my interviews the same as they'd be on the street, even though everyone was carrying cocktails and wearing tuxedos," Stanton told Mashable. "[I] was just hoping to walk away with a few humanizing photos that didn't come off as glorification of celebrity culture."
Still, he wore a "borrowed tux that was too big." Anna Wintour has a dress code, after all.
In addition to Bryan Cranston, star of AMC's Breaking Bad, Stanton spoke to celebrities like Chrissy Teigen, John Legend and Neil Patrick Harris, as well as several non-A-listers (below). Let's hear it for us plebeians, amirite?
"He broke up with me once. For a day." --Chrissy Teigen and John Legend
"Do you remember the most frightening moment of your life?" "Walking up the stairs of the Met in this dress."
"She's my Rock of Gibraltar."
"One time we were driving through Italy, and we were listening to a radio station that played nothing but melodramatic Italian love songs. So we started inventing translations. The stories we made up kept getting more and more ridiculous, until soon we were both in tears." --Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka
"A few years ago, I'd probably feel pressured to be in there mingling. Now I just do what's comfortable."
BONUS: This Is the Human Behind 'Humans of New York'