5 Delightfully Tech-y Dresses from the 2016 Met Gala

met gala, met, dresses, costume institute — Embroidered dresses on display at the "Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology" exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Image credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

This year's Met Gala showed the world what happens when high fashion meets cutting-edge technology. The theme of the gala, which benefits the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, was "Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology" — and many of the event's celebrity guests took the theme to heart, blending their couture looks with supercool tech. (The event was co-hosted by Apple's chief design officer, Jonathan Ive.) Here are five of Live Science's favorite looks from the star-studded event.

Karolina Kurkova

Model Kurkova also took the theme of the gala to heart, wearing a dress designed by Marchesa and IBM's Watson team. The "cognitive dress" was covered in LED lights that changed colors based on what people tweeted about the two brands throughout the night, according to US Weekly.

Allison Williams

Actress Williams' gown, designed by Peter Pilotto, embraced one of the hottest trends in tech today: 3D printing. The dress was adorned with 3D-printed white flowers, Williams told her Snapchat followers. "My 3-D Printed Flowers and I are on our way!" she wrote on her Snapchat account before the event. [Gallery: Futuristic 'Smart Textiles' Merge Fashion with Tech]

Emma Watson

Watson went eco-friendly with an outfit made from recycled materials. The look, designed by Calvin Klein, was fashioned from recycled plastic bottles for a project that the designer, along with the consulting firm Eco-Age, called the Green Carpet Challenge, reported the Telegraph.

Watson's outfit was created using yarns made from recycled plastic bottles, her stylist, Sarah Slutsky, wrote on her Instagram account. And in keeping with the theme of recycling, Slutsky added that the ensemble will be worn again in the future.

Julie Macklowe

While Macklowe's jumpsuit didn't technically do anything special, the entrepreneur's look was definitely robot chic.

Claire Danes

Danes' baby-blue dress looked stunning on the red carpet, but it wasn't until the lights went out that the dress really stole the spotlight. The Cinderella-esque ball gown, designed by Zac Posen, was made of ultrathin fiber-optic fibers woven into organza, which lit up to turn the fairy-tale dress into a sci-fi wonder.

Follow Sara G. Miller on Twitter @saragmiller. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science.

Sara is a staff writer for Live Science, covering health. She grew up outside of Philadelphia and studied biology at Hamilton College in upstate New York. When she's not writing, she can be found at the library, checking out a big stack of books.