On Monday evening, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez arrived at the 2021 Met Gala with a bright red message on the back of her designer dress “Tax the Rich.”

As she climbed the stairs of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, dressed in a white off-the-shoulder gown by Brooklyn-based designer company Brother Vellies, the New York lawmaker exposed the remark, scrawled in bold script on the back of her gown.

Ocasio-Cortez, who was making her Met Gala debut, finished the ensemble with her signature gold hoops and a single pink flower put into her hair bun.

She explained why she had brought her message to the Met Gala, which is attended by many of Hollywood’s biggest stars, to reporters at the event.

“When we talk about supporting working families and when we talk about having a fair tax code, oftentimes this conversation is happening among working and middle-class people (on) the senate floor.

“I think it’s time we bring all classes into the conversation,” she added.

AOC’s decision to wear white recalled a long tradition of American congresswomen donning the color in honor of the women’s suffrage fight. In 2019, she wore a white suit to her inauguration ceremony, later explaining on Twitter that it was in celebration of “the women who paved the before me, and for all the women yet to come.”

Brother Vellies’ creative director Aurora James, who is known for launching a campaign known as the “15% Pledge,” accompanied Ocasio-Cortez on the red carpet. The pledge, which started on Instagram, calls on shops and corporations to devote 15% of their purchasing power to Black-owned businesses.

The event also displayed other bold statements. The event raises funds for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and takes its topic from the museum’s most recent exhibition this year, “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.”

Megan Rapinoe, a soccer star from the USA Olympic soccer team, attended the event clutching a purse that read “In Gay We Trust,” while Carolyn B. Maloney, who is also a congresswoman, arrived in a bright frock with big letters that read “Equal Rights for Women.”

Maloney addressed her daring attire, which commemorates the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, on Twitter. “Across the country, women’s rights are under attack.”

Other celebrities paid respect to American icons, channeled old Hollywood, and paid homage to the country’s melting pot of cultures in their interpretations of the all-American subject.

AOC recently slammed Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott for his “deep ignorance” about abortion after he defended the state’s new six-week abortion ban earlier in the day.

“He speaks from such a place of deep ignorance … and it’s not just ignorance, it’s ignorance that’s hurting people across this country,” the New York Democrat told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on “AC360.”

Her remarks came in response to Abbott’s vehement defense of the contentious Texas law that prohibits abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy, making it one of the strictest in the country and prohibiting abortion before many women are even aware they are pregnant. Abortion is illegal in Texas when a fetal heartbeat is detected, and there is no exception for rape or incest – though there is an exception for “medical emergencies.”

When asked about the lack of an exception for rape or incest in the law earlier Tuesday, Abbott defended the six-week period during which abortions are still legal and vowed to work to “eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas.”

Ocasio-Cortez called the governor’s comments a “disgusting” defense of a law centered on “controlling people who are not cisgender men.”

“I’m sorry we have to break down Biology 101 on national television, but in case no one has informed him before in his life, six weeks pregnant means two weeks late for your period. And two weeks late on your period for any person — any person with a menstrual cycle — can happen if you’re stressed, if your diet changes or for really no reason at all. So you don’t have six weeks,” she said.

Addressing the governor’s idea to “eliminate rape,” the New York congresswoman argued that “these aren’t just predators that are walking around the streets at night.”

“They are people’s uncles, they are teachers, they are family friends, and when something like that happens, it takes a very long time, first of all, for any victim to come forward. And second of all, when a victim comes forward, they don’t necessarily want to bring their case into the carceral system. They don’t want to re-traumatize themselves by going to court. They don’t necessarily all want to report a family friend to a police precinct, let alone in the immediate aftermath of the trauma of a sexual assault,” she told Cooper.