Lena Dunham’s Met Gala 2026 dress was inspired by blood spatter

That’s one way to slay a red carpet.

Lena Dunham returned to the Met Gala red carpet on Monday for the first time in seven years — in a dress inspired by a 17th century beheading.

The “Girls” creator, 39, wore a custom crimson gown by Valentino’s Alessandro Michele, embroidered with sequins and trimmed with crow’s feathers that encircled the high neckline and ran down the end of the long train.

This year’s “Costume Art” theme asked guests to mine art history for fashion inspiration, and together, Dunham and Michele zeroed in on Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi’s circa-1620 masterwork “Judith Slaying Holofernes,” which depicts two women beheading an Assyrian general.

Gentileschi, who was raped by her painting tutor as a teenager and tortured during the resulting 1612 trial, is believed to have painted the scene as an act of retribution.

“Rather than leaning into the Renaissance garments or the swords or any of it, he was attracted to a particular blood spatter on the neck of Holofernes,” Dunham told Vogue. “Obviously, that’s what I was going to choose.”

She carried the reference into her jewelry, pairing the gown with onyx ear jackets featuring silver sword-shaped drops, a blood-spatter patterned manicure and bleached eyebrows. Scarlet Valentino Rockstud heels finished the look, which was styled by Talia Cassel and Michael Handler.

For the after-party, she swapped the bloodbath drama for a more literal nod to the era: an ivory bustier dress with a flouncy gathered skirt, lace-up boots and a beaded pendant necklace.

Monday was a full-circle moment for Dunham, who served on this year’s host committee and grew up visiting the museum every Sunday with her family. Her Met history, though, has been anything but smooth.

In her new memoir, “Famesick,” Dunham reveals she was hospitalized for days after the 2017 gala due to endometriosis complications and attended in 2018 while on leave from a rehab facility, describing it as “a fever dream — cameras flashing, people shouting names that weren’t mine, champagne I couldn’t drink circulating like a joke I wasn’t in on.”

Her last appearance came in 2019, when she and “Girls” co-star Jemima Kirke wore matching Christopher Kane latex.

“This year was a bit of a vote of confidence,” Dunham told Vogue. “I felt like they were saying, ‘We see you’re feeling better. You’re in your body. You can do this.’”

Off the carpet, Dunham’ has been touring “Famesick” around the country, and her Netflix rom-com “Good Sex,” starring Natalie Portman and Mark Ruffalo, is slated for release later this year.