Sarah Jessica Parker
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 02: Sarah Jessica Parker attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)

An icon for hats on one’s head (remember the nativity scene?), Sarah Jessica Parker arrived at the 2022 Met Gala today in a gown designed by American designer Christopher John Rogers. But it’s the backstory, and the unbridled imaginations of this actor-designer pairing, that remind us that in a sea of models and TikTokers, Parker is the real fashion deal.

This year, the dress code is “Gilded Glamour”, an homage to those who kept the gilded age golden, a 20-year period in the late 1800s which saw great economic and industrial growth in the United States. As Parker tells Vogue, she researched former First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln’s seamstress, a woman named Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley who was also a civil rights activist and author at the time.

“She designed all of Mrs Lincoln’s clothes. She was born into slavery and bought her way out of slavery to have an enormously accomplished, inspiring and extraordinary life,” Parker says of Keckley. “This dress, I thought, was really exquisite and pretty much fit the period of time which Andrew Bolton has based his exhibit. So, I asked Christopher John to be part of it.”

Her headpiece is by Irish milliner Philip Treacy “as always”, she adds. See it from every angle below.

And if you’d like to read more about Keckely, there is a great piece here by her in the New York Times. It’s titled”Overlooked No More.”

Sarah Jessica Parker
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 02: Sarah Jessica Parker attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)
Sarah Jessica Parker
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 02: Sarah Jessica Parker attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/WireImage)
Sarah Jessica Parker
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 02: Sarah Jessica Parker attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images)
Sarah Jessica Parker
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 02: Sarah Jessica Parker attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/WireImage)
Sarah Jessica Parker
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 02: Sarah Jessica Parker attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images)
Sarah Jessica Parker
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 02: Sarah Jessica Parker attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/WireImage)