The 2018 Met Gala red carpet could have been an unholy mess. Instead it was a revelation.

NEW YORK — Anna Wintour called her children to church Monday. And in a surprising show of reverence, nearly all came in their “Sunday best” as the invitation requested.

What could have been a quagmire of a Met Gala theme — “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” — instead produced some of the best looks in recent memory. Rihanna was divine in full-blown papal style complete with glittering miter. Her co-chair Amal Clooney heavenly in a sleek bustier and pants (!) with jaw-dropping train by British designer Richard Quinn. “The kind of thing you’d wear around the house,” the barrister quipped.

The annual gala, with its theme predicated on the opening of the year’s Costume Institute exhibit, has notoriously produced questionable garb from guests. “China Through the Looking Glass” resulted in calls of cultural appropriation at 2015’s Gala. 2017 may go down as the year of lingerie-as-evening wear, despite the focus on Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons, and Madonna courted a similar controversy in 2016, drawing criticism for her figure-exposing look at the “Manus X Machina” gala.

“A lot of people have obviously gone for the shining angelic look, and that’s appropriate,” Vogue editor-at-large Hamish Bowles told USA TODAY on the red carpet. “I think there’s some monastic, a couple of nuns have just arrived. I think it’s open to any number of interpretations and then I think a number of people have taken inspiration from those more abstract things, like stained glass windows and those extraordinary colors, or 14th century angels like I have.”

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On the angelic side: Katy Perry, Amanda Seyfried, Evan Rachel Wood, Winnie Harlow. Greta Gerwig represented the sisters of the habit. And Gigi Hadid was a veritable Tiffany lamp.

Other references included the Virgin Mother (Kate Bosworth, Cardi B), Joan of Arc (Zendaya), the Sistine Chapel (Ariana Grande).

Many balked when “Heavenly Bodies” was announced, questioning whether it would be the most controversial to date, resulting in a carpet filled with sacrilegious images and naked dresses adorned with crucifixes. After all, fashion has had a long and sordid history with religion. Or rather, Catholicism has had a long history with fashion.

Several of the most remarkable results of the interplay are on display in the Anna Wintour Costume Center (opening to the public May 10).

In the 20th century, designers and entertainers took to subverting religious themes. Elsa Schiaparelli titled her fall 1938 collection “Pagan,” inspired by Botticelli’s paintings but resulting in the appearance of bugs crawling all over the wearer. Alexander McQueen held his fall 1996 show “Dante” in a candlelit church, putting crucifixes on eye-masks and had an actual skeleton front-row.

But the exhibit, nor the carpet, veered too far into the political. There were no sex abuse boycotts to be seen.

The subversiveness seen on the Met red carpet was thoughtful rather than flaunting: Lena Waithe’s LGBTQ cape; Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s dress printed with illustrations of female pleasure from The Joy of Sex; and Linda Carter’s mix of the Jewish star and Hebrew letter.

“I was raised Catholic but I raised my family also in the Jewish faith,” Carter said. “I’m being inclusive.”

It’s telling that so many attendees and designers alike grew up in the Catholic church, even if many, like designer Christian Lacroix, did not remain observant into adulthood. Lacroix is famous for using iconography in his work, as he did on a jacket featuring a crystal-covered cross from his 1988 couture show. That piece made Wintour’s first Vogue cover as editor in 1988, and is one of the modern pieces on display in the new exhibit.

He’s only one example from the exhibit and gala of how hard it is to shake those Catholic roots.

“I was an alter boy as a kid so I’m very very into the theme,” said Jimmy Fallon. “I should have brought incense. I didn’t put any work into it. I just wore a tuxedo.”

For Tommy Hilfiger, religion “always, always,” plays a roll, perhaps never more so than Monday night when he and wife Dee Ocleppo ambled up the Met stairs, she in a gilded gown with bejeweled cross, he with matching iconography on the back of of his tux.

His inspiration for the night?

“In the name of the father, the son and Holy Spirit.”

Even Madonna, pop provocateur and occasional thorn in the Vatican’s side, took the night and her Catholic background seriously. She luxuriated in the process of climbing the stairs, clearly understanding the interest in the sartorial direction the Like a Virgin singer would choose and giving plenty of people time to look. In the end, it was a black Jean Paul Gaultier gown. Slightly goth, but not a faux stigmata in sight.

“God is love,” she proclaimed.

Hopefully the fashion gods approve.

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