She arrived on the red carpet in a Christopher John Rogers gown, complete with a corset of oversized lacing on the sleeves, a train, and alternating black, white, and gray paneling. It sounds like a lot, but of course, Parker gets it. The dress is inspired by Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, Mary Todd Lincoln‘s official dressmaker who made history as the first black woman fashion designer in the White House. In classic SJP fashion, she completed the look with a huge, statuesque hairdo and a Philip Treacy fascinator.

Sarah Jessica Parker has been attending the 2022 MET Gala since the early ’90s, and she has too many iconic looks to count. She’s also serious about it, and in a recent video for Vogue, she expressed her confusion over celebrities not following the issue.

‘I just think about the topic. And in the influence’, she says in the video. “Every time I go to the MET, I don’t understand how everyone else hasn’t spent seven to 10 months working on it,” she said. ‘I say to myself: How do they not arrive exhausted from the details of doing it well? All these people have come together and worked very, very hard to put on an extraordinary exhibition, it would be as easy to find a nice dress to wear that night, as if it were a great relief, as going on vacation,’ he joked. ‘But that’s not the assignment. The assignment is the issue.’

‘Sometimes the topic escapes you, you can spend days, and I’ve had conversations like: What does this topic mean? We’ve had some very abstract themes, where you ask yourself: How do you interpret it?’