Angelo Landriscina was looking for a tweed Saint Laurent jacket on The RealReal earlier this year when another tweed suit on the luxury resale platform caught his attention.
The ensemble, a cropped white Wiederhoeft tuxedo jacket with black trim and matching pants, was listed for $6,600. ($4,200 for the jacket; $2,400 for the pants.)
“I did favorite it and I just left it chilling there,” Mr. Landriscina said in an interview, explaining that he liked the suit’s look but not its price.
He kept an eye on the suit and, being unfamiliar with Wiederhoeft, which is known for corsetry, bridal and theatrical women’s wear, he also did an online search for the label.
That’s when Mr. Landriscina, 36, a dermatologist in New York, discovered that the ensemble looked exactly like the one worn by the actor Ben Platt to the 2023 Met Gala.
As special as the suit seemed to be, Mr. Landriscina said its apparent rarity was not enough for him to buy the “couture-level” garment. But once it was marked down by 50 percent, he couldn’t resist. Mr. Landriscina bought the suit in July, about five months after he first saw the listing.
After promotional credits, taxes and shipping fees were applied, he paid $3,108.92 for the secondhand Wiederhoeft suit constructed from silk tulle, taffeta, chiffon, raffia, ostrich feathers and metal strips. New bridal gowns from the brand can cost as much as $25,000.
“I’ve been secondhand and vintage shopping for a long time, and I’ve definitely come across other unique things, but it’s never been that I came across somebody’s Met Gala look,” he said. “It’s kind of mind-boggling to me, because you would think that this might be something the designer would want to keep in their archive.”
A spokesman for Mr. Platt said that the suit was indeed the ensemble he wore to the Met Gala and that he had returned it to Wiederhoeft after the event. A Wiederhoeft spokesman confirmed that Mr. Platt had returned the suit, but declined to comment about how it ended up on The RealReal. Noelle Sciacca, who handles fashion and strategic partnerships at The RealReal, said the suit was one of about 50 items that Wiederhoeft listed on the platform in February as part of a collaboration.
On an episode of The RealReal’s “Real Talk” podcast released in February, Wiederhoeft’s founder, Jackson Wiederhoeft, who started the label after working at Thom Browne for several years, spoke about selling several Thom Browne suits on The RealReal to help pay for the first Wiederhoeft collection.
“I don’t wear a lot of suits,” said Mx. Wiederhoeft, who uses a gender neutral courtesy title. “I was never really the suit type so much.”
Mr. Landriscina, who recounted his purchase of the white Wiederhoeft tweed suit in a recent TikTok post, said he had envisioned himself wearing the ensemble to a wedding. The year that Mr. Platt wore the suit to the Met Gala, guests were encouraged to take inspiration from Karl Lagerfeld, the longtime Chanel designer whose career was the focus of the 2023 Costume Institute exhibition that inspired the gala’s theme.
“It’s just a bit of Chanel tweed,” Mr. Platt told a CBS News reporter on the carpet when asked about the Wiederhoeft suit. “A little bit of men’s wear, women’s wear combo.”
Finding a Met Gala look in a sale section might evoke a metaphor involving needles and haystacks. But in recent years, as celebrities’ wardrobes have become more accessible through closet sales, auctions and even stoop sales, the possibility has become slightly less remote. Last year, Jenna Lyons, the J. Crew executive turned reality TV star, included her 2012 Met Gala look — a hot pink Schiaparelli skirt paired with a denim shirt — among the offerings at a sale she had in New York.
For avid resale shoppers like Mr. Landriscina, the existence of these hidden treasures make the hunt only more thrilling.
“It’s just kind of crazy to me,” he said. “As time went on, as I went through this process, I was just like, How can this happen?”
Yola Mzizi is a reporter for the Styles section and a member of the 2025-2026 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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