Pamela Anderson never thought she would go to the Met Gala.

She was, in her most famous years, not a Met Gala kind of girl; her pictures in Playboy, not Vogue. But ahead of the first Monday in May there she was, finally, at age 56, getting ready to take her place on the red carpet at the museum.

“I feel like everything has led me to this pinnacle moment where I get to be at the Met, being respected and accepted by Anna Wintour,” Ms. Anderson said before the gala. She was in a hotel room at the Lowell, getting ready for a dress fitting. “I can imagine that in the past I was not someone she would ever take a second look at. I wasn’t in fashion, ever. I wasn’t cool. And I know those things may seem really superficial to some people, but it means a lot to me. I think I’m ready to meet her now.”

“I’m terrified,” she continued. “But that’s my happy place.”

This was the final step in a hero’s journey that wound through the gantlet of “Baywatch,” multiple marriages, a public shaming, a cultural reckoning and the redemption of a book, a documentary and a Broadway show.

It was one that took her from mostly taking off her clothes and being the face of Labatt’s beer to sitting in the front rows of Paris Fashion Week and being a face of Proenza Schouler. And one that has made her, over the last year, a fashion darling. The style set loves nothing so much as a makeover, especially of its own perceptions. The Met was simply the coronation.

“I’ve had this kind of rock ’n’ roll wild existence,” Ms. Anderson said. “But I always knew that this person was inside me. This lady. I’m like, ‘Oh, there you are.’”