Indian model Bhavitha Mandava’s Met Gala debut in what appeared to be a pair of blue jeans has sparked one of the biggest fashion debates of this year’s event.

Social media users accused Chanel of underdressing its first Indian house ambassador, while others defended the look as a deliberate piece of conceptual couture that tied closely to this year’s Met Gala theme.

The 26-year-old model arrived at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Monday wearing a beige muslin half zip sweater over a white muslin top and muslin printed pants with a blue denim effect, designed by Chanel creative director Matthieu Blazy.

Criticism of her look began almost immediately, with multiple social media users questioning why Mandava had been styled in what looked like casual streetwear for her first appearance at fashion’s biggest night.

“Chanel, you did wrong,” one person wrote on X. “Putting her in a simple everyday outfit at the Met Gala and calling it art. The absolute disrespect.”

Another wrote: “Making Bhavitha Mandava the face of Chanel and then not putting any effort for her big moment. Not even a dress. They wouldn't have done this if it was a white model.”

“It’s an underwhelming look for the Met Gala that’s for sure,” one Reddit user wrote, echoing what some said, that the outfit was anticlimactic for an event that is synonymous with spectacle.

Mandava, a Hyderabad-born former architecture student, moved to New York to pursue graduate studies before being discovered while waiting for a subway train in Brooklyn in 2024. A modelling agency scout approached her during her commute and later sent her photographs to renowned casting director Anita Bitton, who then shared them with Blazy, the then creative director of Bottega Veneta.

Blazy cast Mandava in the brand’s spring/summer 2025 show, marking her runway debut mere weeks after she was scouted.

In December 2025, Mandava became the first Indian model to open a Chanel runway show during the house’s Métiers d’Art presentation staged inside a decommissioned New York subway station. The show deliberately referenced the circumstances of her discovery, with Mandava opening the presentation in a quarter-zip sweater and washed denim inspired by the outfit she had been wearing when she was first approached on the subway.

That same silhouette became the basis for her Met Gala debut look.

In a statement to The Independent, Chanel said the outfit required 250 hours to create and described it as a “Haute Couture reinterpretation” of the look Mandava wore to open the Métiers d’Art show in New York, “marking her return to the city where she was first discovered”.

Mandava and Blazy revisited some of her favourite Chanel moments while developing the outfit, with Blazy transforming the deliberately ordinary silhouette into couture for fashion’s biggest night.

“I had to pause when I saw the sketch, because that subway show was already one of the most significant nights of my career,” Mandava told British Vogue. “Turning it into something reimagined for the Met felt like carrying that memory forward, but in a more elevated way that still respects the original spirit and the theme of the evening.”

What appeared to be denim jeans were in fact silk muslin trousers printed with a “blue denim effect” using trompe l’oeil techniques by Chanel’s ateliers.

“What I know is that the subway wasn’t a backdrop for my story, it was the story. And every time it comes back around, I’m reminded that ordinary moments hold everything,” Mandava added.

In a later interview with Elle magazine on the Met Gala carpet, Mandava said the outfit was intended as “the couture version” of her real-life clothes. “I feel like every design he makes has a very deep story to it,” she said of Blazy.

Mandava has not directly addressed the backlash surrounding the outfit. However, she reposted an Instagram Story that praised Chanel’s use of trompe l’oeil – an artistic technique designed to make one material resemble another – to create “lightweight couture denim”.

The Independent has reached out to Mandava’s agency for comment.

As criticism of the outfit spread online, many argued that the backlash ignored the very thing the Met Gala theme was supposed to celebrate: fashion as illusion, construction, and artistic technique.

This year’s exhibition, “Costume Art,” and its accompanying dress code, “Fashion Is Art”, focused on the relationship between clothing, performance, and visual art. Guests were asked to “celebrate the countless depictions of the dressed body throughout art history”.

For those defending Mandava’s look, the fact that her “jeans” were not jeans at all was precisely the point.

“Making silk look like denim jeans IS a display of how Fashion is Art,” one X user wrote. “I like how it actually focuses on how garment construction and textile work IS a form of art.” Another user described Chanel’s use of trompe l’oeil as “a really great take on ‘fashion is art’”.

Others interpreted the styling itself as a deliberate rejection of the exaggerated glamour now associated with the Met Gala. “The contrast to everyone else's outfits itself is a statement,” one Reddit user wrote.

For some critics, the issue was not whether the outfit fit the theme, but who Chanel had chosen to present that way. Fashion watchdog Diet Prada posted the question on Instagram: “Was Chanel’s Met Gala look for Bhavitha Mandava racist?”

The social media account questioned why Chanel had chosen to revisit Mandava’s subway-inspired styling for what it described as “such an important event as the Met Gala”, especially when other Chanel attendees like K-pop star Jennie and Hollywood actors Margot Robbie and Lily-Rose Depp appeared in more traditionally glamorous eveningwear.

Indian fashion commentator Sufi Motiwala said on Instagram that Chanel had “tokenised” Mandava. “She is in the look that she opened the show in for Chanel that went viral, and you're telling me they sent her in jeans for ‘Fashion is Art?’” he said.

Reality television personality Anisha Ramakrishna Tarpara described the outfit as something one wears “on the subway” and “to go to CVS”. “Chanel really said ‘we see India and we want to meet you underground,’” she added.

Former Vogue India editor Megha Kapoor disagreed that the look as racist and wrote: “Let her speak for herself – she’s an absolute credit to herself, South Asians & still looked better than most.”