Two assets the modern 1% love to show off are their designer wardrobes … and their expensive bodies. The Met Gala opening of an exhibition about “the dressed body” presented an opportunity to do both, and it proved irresistible. The evening raised a record-breaking $42m (£31m) for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the lead sponsors Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos thought to have contributed $10m, and individual guests writing cheques for up to $1m in order to make the Anna Wintour-approved final cut.

The official dress code was “Fashion Is Art”. But the golden rule in fashion, as in life, is that those with the gold make the rules, and this elite crowd bent Wintour’s diktat according to their will. The red carpet was divided between looks that paid tribute to famous fashion moments in art history, and others that celebrated the body itself as a very modern masterpiece.

No prizes for guessing which half made the biggest splash. Just as the Costume Institute’s annual opening party red carpet always attracts far more attention than any of the exhibits inside, nipples, skeletons and cleavage dominated discourse on the night. This was one of the more spectacular Met Galas of recent years, the spotlight on sculpted bodies lending a Madame Tussauds vibe that spiced up the glamour. And beyond the clickbait, there were thoughtful interrogations of the is-fashion-art question from designers and the muses they dressed, bringing to life a rich best-dressed list drawn from the walls of the world’s great art collections.

Beyoncé became the world’s most glamorous skeleton, dressed from collarbone to ankle in sparkling crystal bones over a sheer flesh-toned dress, in a collaboration with the designer Olivier Rousteing. The Kardashians went nipple-forward, with Kim, Kylie and Kendall all wearing corsets or breast plates. Kim’s gravity-defying, new-car-shiny bullet-pointed breasts were a collaboration with the British pop artist Allen Jones. Kylie Jenner’s nude corset had prosthetic breasts and belly button and an attached dress that appeared to be slipping to the floor, a smart Schiaparelli homage to the half-naked, fabric-draped Venus de Milo.

There were plenty more surreal moments. Lisa from the girl group Blackpink had two additional arms within her veiled gown, sculpted from 3D scans of her own body by the designer Robert Wun and posed in reference to traditional Thai dance. The embroidery on Skepta’s Thom Browne suit was copied directly from tattoos on his body beneath.

There were no fewer than three Madame Xs in the house. Sánchez Bezos, Julianne Moore and Claire Foy all channelled the Met’s ultimate style icon, as painted in black velvet by John Singer Sargent. Sánchez Bezos has often been disparaged for her style choices, but she understood this assignment, her Schiaparelli gown both a showcase for her hourglass curves and a wink to the controversial glamour of a painting which scandalised polite society with its lasciviousness, just as Sánchez Bezos – with her inauguration lingerie and Venice mega-wedding – has done. Like Moore in her Bottega Veneta dress and Foy in Erdem’s take, the dress was designed with one strap falling from the shoulder, as in the original version of the painting.

Chloe Malle, Wintour’s successor in the editor’s chair at Vogue, was dressed in mango-hued Colleen Allen as the painter Frederic Leighton’s Flaming June, while Angela Bassett also took inspiration from the Met collection, her rosy Prabal Gurung look a close likeness of Laura Wheeler Waring’s 1927 Girl in Pink Dress. Gracie Abrams came as Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer in an embroidered gold Chanel gown. Lena Dunham, whose new memoir, Famesick, chronicles a life defined by celebrity glamour and chronic fame, went meta in a red feathered Valentino homage to Artemisia Gentileschi, which took its colour from a blood spatter detail in her 1620 painting Judith Slaying Holofernes. Madonna’s gothic ghost-ship headpiece was a nod to the surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, who also inspired the singer’s 1995 music video for Bedtime Story, which is now part of MOMA’s art and video museum.

This year’s Met Gala has been soured by unease at how fashion has enabled Bezos and other tech billionaires to leverage their deep pockets to embed themselves within the Met, one of New York’s most beloved cultural institutions. On the night itself, the tech bros kept a low profile. The Google co-founder Sergey Brin posed for photos in a navy suit embroidered with Matisse-style faces, but Bezos skipped the red carpet and joined his wife inside. Mark Zuckerberg, in a Prada tuxedo, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, in a red Alaïa gown, also made a low-profile entrance, but were seated at Wintour’s table.