Sarah Jessica Parker has long been viewed as the unofficial queen of the Costume Institute Gala (tied with Rihanna, of course), and this year’s Met Gala is no different.
She arrived on the red carpet wearing a gown by Christopher John Rogers, featuring a bustier top, oversized bows on the sleeves, a train, and alternating black, white, and gray panels. It sounds like a lot, but of course Parker pulls it off. The gown was inspired by Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, Mary Todd Lincoln’s official dressmaker and the first Black female fashion designer in the White House who was a formerly enslaved woman. In classic SJP fashion, she finished off the look with a massive sculptural updo and a fascinator by Philip Treacy.
Sarah Jessica Parker has been attending the Met Gala off and on since the early ’90s and has too many iconic looks to count. She takes it seriously as well, and in a recent video for she expressed her confusion for celebrities who don’t follow the theme.
“All I ever think about is the theme. And influence,” she says in the video. “Whenever I go to the Met, I don’t understand how everyone else didn’t spend seven to ten months working on it. I’m like, ‘How do you not arrive exhausted by the details of getting it right?’ All these people came together and worked really, really hard to put together an extraordinary exhibit; it would be so easy to find a beautiful dress to wear that night, like, that would be a great relief, like going on vacation! But that is not the assignment. The assignment is the theme.”
“It is an assignment and you should interpret it, and it should be labor-intensive, and it should be challenging,” she continued. “Sometimes the theme eludes you, like, you could spend days—and I have had conversations like, ‘What does this theme mean?’ We’ve had some very abstract themes, where you’re like: ‘How do you interpret that?’”
When it comes to tonight’s theme, she nailed it. As usual.
