The May 2026 tarot spread Choose a card
This month I decided to channel my inner Miranda Priestly, since May is both about new beginnings and big comebacks. Thanks to going to see Il Diavolo Veste Prada 2, I found myself once again catapulted into a world made of haute couture, runway shows and major guest stars (plus, of course, the full returning cast… except Nate. Luckily, I’d add). After twenty years, the Devil is back and is still setting the rules on fashion and style, even if it has to face an increasingly digital, views-driven form of journalism (but the book will always remain printed, some things never change). It’s no coincidence that this film came out right now, at a moment when fashion has never been so central to collective cultural storytelling: not only as an industry, but as identity. The MET Gala 2026 confirms it: this year’s theme was Fashion is Art, inviting anyone who climbs those steps to see their body as a canvas. In fact, many guests - from Madonna to Hunter Schafer to Sabrina Carpenter (and her dress made of film reels from the movie Sabrina) - chose to pay tribute to art and paintings by turning them into memorable outfits.
Tarot cards are fashion in at least two senses. The first is the most obvious: in recent years, the cards have become an aesthetic, a cultural object you wear as much as you practice. They appear printed on sweatshirts, in brand collaborations, in the stories of anyone who has gone through a moment of existential crisis between 2020 and today. They’ve become part of the visual vocabulary of a generation that learned to look for answers in symbols before institutions. The second meaning is more ancestral, and perhaps the most interesting: the cards have always been a system of images that speaks about how we present ourselves to the world. Each arcana is a dressed character: the Emperor in his armor, the High Priestess with her veil, the Fool with his torn cloak. There is not a single card in the deck that does not communicate something through what it wears: traditionally, during readings, what the figure is wearing is also analyzed, both in classic and more experimental decks. That’s why I decided to use them differently this time. I don’t want to tell you what will happen in May, nor scan your fears or hidden desires. But rather: if you could choose an arcana to wear at the MET Gala, which one would it be? And what would that choice say about you for the month of May?
The May 2026 tarot spread: choose a card
1. The Devil
There is a type of person who does not arrive at the MET Gala to be seen. They arrive to be unrecognizable, and that is the hardest form of power to sustain. The Devil is the card that scares people the most not because it represents evil, but because it represents choice. The figures chained at its feet could leave (the chains are loose, the wrists free) but they stay. Not out of constraint, but because they have chosen to stay, and they do not yet know whether that is strength or surrender. It is Rick Owens: bodies wrapped in layers that feel like skins, silhouettes that challenge human form without ever fully abandoning it, an aesthetic not meant to be desirable, but to become something else. You wear Rick Owens and you never quite know who you are when you leave the house. If you chose this card, May is putting you in front of something you have chosen yourself and keep choosing every day without even asking why. The Devil does not judge you for this, it only asks you to be honest with yourself about what you are holding together and at what cost. The transformation this card brings is never quick or painless, but it is real. And sometimes the first step is not freeing yourself, but stopping pretending you don’t have the means to do so.
2. Nine of Swords
There are garments that are not looked at, they are endured, and this card is one of them. The Nine of Swords is the card of nighttime anguish: a figure sitting in the dark, hands over its face, nine swords hovering above like thoughts that refuse to stop spinning. It is one of the most visually devastating images in the entire deck, and you cannot stop looking at it for that very reason. It is not horror, it is tragedy, and it is exactly the aesthetic of Alexander McQueen: something so beautiful and so difficult to sustain that you wonder whether you are watching a runway show or something far more personal. If you chose this card, May brings with it something heavy, like a question you still cannot answer. The tarot will not tell you everything will be fine, because that is not its job, but it will tell you that what you are carrying is not an unnecessary burden, but something real. The most McQueen thing you can do now is not hide it, but transform it. Anguish does not disappear when ignored: it disappears, or at least transforms, when given meaning.
3. Five of Wands (reversed)
You enter a room and the room knows it before you even open your mouth. It is not arrogance, it is frequency. And this month yours is very high. The Five of Wands upright is open conflict, energy going in every direction; reversed, instead, it means that same tension does not explode, but lingers in the air, turning into something more interesting: chaos becoming spectacle, competition becoming choreography. It is exactly the Versace aesthetic from the Gianni era, provocation without apology, excess that knows exactly what it is doing, a physical presence. It is Jennifer Lopez on the red carpet, Donatella in the front row. The gold and the medusas that do not ask permission to shine. If you chose this card, May is your month, but be careful how you use the energy you have: the Five of Wands reversed is powerful precisely because it has learned not to waste itself; not every battle deserves your attention, not every conflict deserves a response. Choose carefully where to focus that presence, because when you put it all into one thing, it becomes impossible not to look.
