Why Sarah Jessica Parker Won't Be at the Met Gala This Year

Sex and the City’s Sarah Jessica Parker is well-known for her looks on the Met Gala red carpet, but she won’t be walking it this year.

In an interview with Entertainment Tonight this week, Parker explained, “I have to work, but there’s gonna be so much to see and I look forward to seeing what everybody does. And I can’t wait to see how they interpret the theme and the sort of homework they did for the assignment.”

She added, “I care a lot about it and I want to try to really honor the work of the curators and everybody who sort of inspired the moment for those of us who get to attend.”

This year’s event takes place on Monday, May 5, with a theme based on the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition: Superfine: Tailoring Black Style. The exhibit is influenced by Monica L. Miller’s 2009 book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, and will be exploring “the role of sartorial style in forming Black identities, focusing on the emergence, significance, and proliferation of the Black dandy,” according to Vogue.

“Dandyism can seem frivolous, but it often poses a challenge to or a transcendence of social and cultural hierarchies,” Miller shared. “It asks questions about identity, representation, and mobility in relation to race, class, gender, sexuality, and power. This exhibition explores dandyism as both a pronouncement and a provocation.”

Parker has attended the Met Gala 12 times, beginning with her first appearance in 1995, where she wore a black velvet gown she purchased at a thrift store.

During the 2024 Met Gala, which was themed “Garden of Time,” she wore an ensemble by British designer Richard Quinn.

“I had gone to the Sargent and Fashion exhibit at the Tate Britain and been inspired by a few works of art I saw there, but it was his collection that really seemed to instinctively interpret the theme,” Parker told Vogue at the time.