A decade after a late-night confrontation between Jay-Z and Solange Knowles captivated the internet, one of the people closest to the scene says the spark behind it was far more mundane than fans long imagined.
According to the New York Post, fashion designer Oscar G. Lopez, who created Rachel Roy’s dress for the 2014 Met Gala, said this week that a simple remark may have set the tension in motion.
Lopez told the Daily Mail that Jay-Z complimented Roy on the gown as the night unfolded. According to him, Solange took issue with the exchange.
“I think that Jay-Z complimented [Roy] about the gown, and Beyoncé’s sister felt that it was not proper, so it was a kind of drama there,” he said.
What happened next became one of the most replayed celebrity moments of the 2010s.
Surveillance footage from an elevator at the Standard Hotel showed Solange lunging at, kicking and swinging at Jay-Z after a Met Gala afterparty. The silent clip leaked online and instantly went viral.
For Lopez, the unexpected attention sent his work into orbit.
“The dress was all over the news. That was so funny,” he recalled, adding that “any press is good press.”
Lopez described Roy as a “sweetheart” and said she arrived late to the Met Gala that evening, missing the red carpet and leaving his design with little visibility — at least until the elevator incident took over the news cycle.
He also brushed off long-running rumors that Jay-Z and Roy had been romantically involved, calling such speculation “silly.”
Page Six previously reported that Solange had been drinking and exchanged heated words with Roy at the hotel, though the source did not specify what triggered the disagreement.
Lopez pointed out that Roy had longstanding ties to Jay-Z and Damon Dash, having worked her way up at Rocawear after interning at the fashion label the two men cofounded.
Jay-Z and Beyoncé later addressed his past infidelity in their music, though neither ever confirmed the identity of the woman at the center of the controversy.
Roy inflamed the rumor mill in 2016 when she posted “Good hair don’t care” shortly after Beyoncé’s “Becky with the good hair” lyric went public. She later said the message was “misunderstood.”
Jay-Z followed a year later in “Family Feud,” admitting to cheating and telling “Becky” to “leave [him] alone.”
As for the infamous elevator moment, Jay-Z and Solange issued a statement soon after the altercation, saying they had “apologized to each other” and had “moved forward as a united family.”
