There may be nothing Sarah Jessica Parker loves more than a theme. While most attendees at the Met Gala take the dress code as just a light suggestion, Parker always commits. For 2013’s “Punk: Chaos to Couture” exhibit, the actress arrived in a printed Giles Deacon gown with thigh-high plaid Christian Louboutin boots, topped off with a Philip Treacy-designed mohawk headdress. It was a look she herself would outdo just two years later at the “China: Through the Looking Glass” themed gala in 2015, where she teamed her H&M dress with another headpiece by Treacy, this one made to look like flames were erupting out of her head. It was a look that spurned 1,000 memes—and, really, what more can you ask for from the Met Gala red carpet?

Of course, then there are the actor’s more poignant Met moments—like when she paid homage to Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, a freed slave who went on to become First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln’s dressmaker, in 2022. Or her 2011 look, which honored her late friend Lee McQueen. As of now, there’s no word on whether or not Parker will be attending the event in 2026, but as we wait to see, let’s look through each and every one of the actor’s Met Gala looks over the years.

2024: “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion”

Sarah Jessica Parker’s Richard Quinn dress features hand-cut lace appliquéd over a wire frame, creating a fragility that played into the year’s theme and dress code, “Garden of Time.” Parker was inspired to work with Quinn on the dress after he got involved with looks for And Just Like That.

2022: “In America: An Anthology of Fashion”

The “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” Met Gala in 2022 propelled Parker to channel an important piece of American fashion history. Her custom Christopher John Rogers dress was inspired by Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, a freed slave who went on to become First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln’s dressmaker.

2018: “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”

Dolce & Gabbana had the honor of outfitting Parker for the 2018 Met Gala. Naturally, she wore a Neapolitan nativity scene on her head as an homage to the “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” dress code.

2016: “Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology”

Although Parker usually wears a large gown to the Met, she mixed things up drastically with her 2016 outfit. The actor slipped into capri pants from Monse that she paired with tousled hair, a simple tank top, and a theatrical jacket. Mismatched heels—a classic Carrie Bradshaw styling trick—finished her look.

2015: “China: Through the Looking Glass”

Parker’s H&M ensemble and flame-like Philip Treacy hat was one of the more talked-about looks of the 2015 Met Gala.

2014: “Charles James: Beyond Fashion”

In 2014, the actor picked out a two-tone Oscar de la Renta gown and white opera gloves.

2013: “Punk: Chaos to Couture”

Parker went all out for the 2013 punk-themed Met Gala. She wore an abstract Giles Deacon dress that she paired with a Philip Treacy mohawk hat, which was so tall that it required her to sit on the floor of her car as she made her way to the museum.

2012: “Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations”

Parker paired her floral Valentino dress with thick gold bangles at the 2012 ball.

2011: “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty”

The 2011 Met Gala honored Alexander McQueen and Parker chose to dip into the late great’s archives for the occasion. She wore a blinged-out dress from the designer’s fall 2005 collection.

2010: “American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity”

As a nod to the 2010 exhibition “American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity,” Parker wore a pleated Halston Heritage dress that was asking to be danced in.

2006: “AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion”

In 2006, the actor arrived at the Met steps on the arm of the late Alexander McQueen. Her tartan tutu dress? The perfect interpretation of the night’s “AngloMania” theme.

1995: “Haute Couture”

For her Met Gala debut, Parker went the simple route in an empire waist cocktail dress that she picked up at a thrift shop.

Inside the cavernous former train station that now houses Hamburger Bahnhof, 400,000 wooden cubes stack and topple into piles. Conceived by Lithuanian artist Lina Lapelytė and commissioned by Chanel, “We Make Years Out of Hours” is a large-scale installation that invites the public to remake structures from these 10-centimeter blocks made of pine and spruce.

Lapelytė often combines sound and performance and collaborates with both professionals and novices. This participatory work continues the artist’s interest in collective making and caretaking, particularly as it relates to shared authorship and how we might amend and reshape what currently exists.

A trio of weekly performances on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays will feature a libretto with the words of 15 writers, including Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong, Lebanese-American painter Etel Adnan, Iranian filmmaker
Forugh Farrokhzad, and Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. Centered around community, love, and loss, these songs create another dimension in the space to consider agency and hope.

“We Make Years Out of Hours” opens on May 1 and is on view through January 10, 2027, in Berlin. Explore more of Lapelytė’s multi-disciplinary works on her website and Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Lina Lapelytė Fills Hamburger Bahnhof with 400,000 Wood Blocks for Communal Building appeared first on Colossal.

The allegations stem from a social media post that was interpreted as a coded threat against the sitting US president

A federal grand jury has indicted former FBI Director James Comey for making threats against US President Donald Trump, the Department of Justice announced on Tuesday. If convicted, he faces up to ten years in prison.

The DOJ alleges that “a reasonable recipient familiar with the circumstances” would interpret Comey’s May 2025 Instagram post showing seashells arranged in the sand to form the numbers ‘86 47’ as “a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the president of the United States.”

Critics noted that ‘86’ is slang for eliminating someone, and that Comey’s post could be viewed as a call to kill Trump, who is serving as the 47th president.

Comey denied the allegations, saying he “didn’t realize some people associate those numbers with violence.” He deleted the seashell post shortly after the backlash.

Just James Comey causally calling for my dad to be murdered.

This is who the Dem-Media worships. Demented!!!! pic.twitter.com/4LUK6crHAT

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 15, 2025

“Threatening the life of the president of the United States is a grave violation of our nation’s laws,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said. “This country has witnessed violent incitement followed by deadly actions against President Trump and other elected officials.”

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The indictment came just days after a failed attempt to kill Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, DC on Saturday. Trump also survived two assassination attempts during his 2024 reelection campaign. Republicans and Democrats have accused each other of incitement amid a wave of attacks on officials and activists.

Comey, who led the FBI from 2013 to 2017 under former President Barack Obama, has often criticized Trump, who he compared to a mob boss in his memoirs. 

Last year, a federal grand jury indicted Comey for lying to Congress, a charge later dismissed by a judge.

The UAE’s decision to withdraw from the cartel had been “a long time coming,” Obaid Ahmed Al-Zaabi has said

More countries are “very likely” to withdraw from OPEC following the United Arab Emirates’ decision to leave the group, former UAE diplomat to the UN and World Trade Organization Obaid Ahmed Al-Zaabi told RT.

The Gulf nation announced its intent to leave the cartel and broader OPEC+, which brings together OPEC members and other key oil-producing countries, on Tuesday. The withdrawal is set to come into force on May 1.  

The UAE’s decision has been a “long time coming,” Al-Zaabi has said, arguing that the country has been “substantially” restricting its production while many other members of the groups have been limited by their output capacities.  

“The UAE is no longer entirely dependent on oil and hydrocarbons, and our economy is highly invested all over the world. The organization OPEC acted as a tax on global productivity, and it’s now in our interest to see the world as productive as possible. Also, it costs the UAE the most to impose OPEC,” the ex-diplomat argued.  

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At the same time, Al-Zaabi suggested that the withdrawal was driven more by “other geopolitical realities” rather than oil itself, pinning the blame on Iran’s retaliatory actions against its Gulf neighbors in the wake of the US-Israeli attack.  

“It hardly seems in the UAE’s interest to collude with Iran on the oil price when we’re being directly struck by them,” he argued.

More countries are very likely to follow suit and leave the cartel, the former diplomat said.  

“The truth is very likely, because the more people that defect, the more costly it is to maintain the volume restriction. So if the UAE is serious and they no longer respect the limits, then there’s going to be no incentive for Kuwait and other countries to reduce their production.” 

Watch the full video below:

Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi’s trip underscores Iran’s push for security guarantees as diplomacy strains under US and Israeli pressure

The US-Israeli war against Iran has reached a stage in which military force has failed to achieve the aggressors’ goal, and diplomacy has not yet delivered a stable way out.

What the US and Israel initially presented as a controlled campaign of pressure has turned into a strategic trap. Iran has not capitulated, its diplomatic channels have not collapsed, and the issue that the US and Israel hoped to settle through coercion has returned to the negotiating table in a far more complicated form.

They want Iran to place its nuclear program at the center of the talks from the very beginning. Tehran, after facing military pressure and open threats, insists that the first issue must be security. Iran wants guarantees that the war will not resume and that the region will not remain open to new American or Israeli military actions. Thus, Iran’s new proposal, reportedly delivered to the US through Pakistani intermediaries, suggests discussing the end of hostilities and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz first, while postponing the nuclear issue to a later stage.

If Washington refuses to engage, it risks prolonging a crisis around one of the world’s most sensitive maritime passages. If it accepts the sequence proposed by Tehran, it indirectly acknowledges that military pressure has not worked on Iran. If it demands that the nuclear aspect come first, it reinforces Iran’s argument that the US is not seeking de-escalation, but a mechanism of pressure that can be resumed whenever Washington finds it convenient.

Israel also faces its own constraints, being already stretched across several fronts. Lebanon remains unstable, the confrontation with Iran has not produced a decisive settlement, and domestic political pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains intense. Israeli military action can disrupt and escalate, but it cannot by itself produce a regional order in which Iran simply accepts Israeli demands.

Tehran’s diplomatic outreach

Iran, meanwhile, is far from isolated. On the contrary, it is using its diplomatic network actively and deliberately. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s travels to Pakistan, Oman, and Russia show a coordinated effort to keep several channels open at once.

Pakistan is useful as a mediator because it has access to both sides of the conflict. It was expected to host a second round of US-Iran talks last week, yet the process did not move forward. Contact has not stopped, but the parties cannot agree on the structure of the talks, because they do not agree on what the crisis is really about.

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Oman’s role is central in this context. Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi met with Araghchi in Muscat and described their discussion on the Strait of Hormuz as fruitful. Oman’s diplomacy has long relied on mediation and the ability to speak with actors who do not trust one another. This is precisely the kind of channel Iran wants. Oman is trusted enough by Tehran to carry messages, respected enough by Washington to be useful, and regionally placed to treat Hormuz as a matter of coastal-state responsibility and regional security.

Lebanon is also part of Iran’s calculation. Israel continues to use force in Lebanon despite the ceasefire framework, and this directly affects Tehran’s assessment of Israeli intentions. This suggests that Israel treats ceasefires as temporary pauses rather than binding commitments. This strengthens Tehran’s demand for guarantees. An agreement that stops attacks against Iran but allows continued military pressure on Lebanon would not create regional stability. This is why one of Iran’s reported demands concerns guarantees against further military action against Lebanon. Israeli threats about renewed action against Iran only reinforce Tehran’s argument that guarantees must come before sensitive concessions. The more Israel threatens, the more Iran insists on guarantees. The more Iran insists on guarantees, the harder it becomes for Washington to present the talks as an Iranian retreat.

Araghchi goes to Russia

The Iranian foreign minister’s visit to Russia this week is an effort to bring Tehran’s assessment of the crisis directly to a power that still has working channels with all major sides of the conflict. 

Russia does not see Iran as an isolated actor that can be pressured into silence, nor does it see the crisis as a narrow American-Iranian dispute. At his meeting with Araghchi in St. Petersburg, Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed that Moscow would do everything that serves the interests of Iran and the people of the region so that peace can be achieved as soon as possible. This specific wording presents Russia as a state trying to prevent the Middle East from sliding into a wider and more destructive war.

This is very important for Iran, which is facing not only military threats from the US and Israel, but also an attempt to shape the diplomatic environment around these threats. Washington and West Jerusalem would prefer Tehran to negotiate under pressure, with the nuclear issue placed at the center from the very beginning. By condemning the strikes on Iran and offering mediation, Russia helps prevent the crisis from being reduced to a one-sided ultimatum.

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Russia’s role is also crucial because it can speak in several directions at once. With Iran, it has strategic ties and growing political coordination. With Israel, despite serious disagreements, Russia has long maintained channels of communication. With the Gulf monarchies, Russia has built pragmatic and trusted relations in energy, diplomacy and regional security. With the US, even in conditions of confrontation, Russia remains a global power whose position cannot simply be ignored. This combination gives Moscow a rare ability to serve as an informal stabilizing force when many official Western channels have lost credibility in Tehran.

Araghchi’s trip is therefore a vital part of Iran’s broader diplomatic effort to prevent a repeat of American and Israeli aggression. Tehran is working through Pakistan, Oman, and Russia, while trying to create a diplomatic shield around the central demand that any future settlement must begin with security guarantees. The message Araghchi likely brought to Moscow was that Tehran wants continued Russian diplomatic support, Russian involvement in preventing escalation, and Russian assistance in communicating with regional actors that have influence over the wider balance of power.

Russia has spent years developing pragmatic and respectful ties with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman. These states do not want a major regional war, especially one that could threaten energy markets, maritime security, and domestic stability. Iran understands that Russia can help stabilize this environment. Moscow does not need to replace Oman or Pakistan as a mediator. Its value lies in the fact that it can reinforce the idea that a sustainable settlement must take into account the security of all regional states, not only the preferences of the US and Israel.

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There is also a military-strategic dimension to the visit. In the Middle East, many expect the US and Israel to resume military action against Iran if negotiations fail. Under these conditions, it would be natural for Tehran and Moscow to discuss not only diplomacy but also military-technical cooperation, air defense, intelligence, and the broader security balance. Russia wouldn’t push Iran towards escalation, but it believes that deterrence and diplomacy must work together. A state that is defenseless under pressure is less likely to receive a fair diplomatic outcome, while one that can withstand pressure has more room to negotiate.

A diplomatic crossroads

From Iran’s point of view, Russia is a constructive partner and an important player on both the global and regional levels. Russia is not demanding that Iran begin talks by accepting American demands, and it does not condone Israel’s continued aggression in the region. Moscow’s public line is centered on ending the war and preventing further escalation. It is acting not just as a supporter of Tehran, but as a force for stability in the wider Middle East.

The coming phase of diplomacy will be decisive. If the US accepts the phased process Iran is pushing for, the crisis could move from military confrontation toward controlled bargaining. If it refuses, the region could remain suspended between ceasefire and renewed war. If Israel continues to strike Lebanon and threaten Iran, Tehran will have little reason to trust any arrangement that lacks guarantees. And if Russia, Oman, and Pakistan continue to mediate, Iran will retain the diplomatic depth it needs to resist isolation and keep the settlement process alive.

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Kiev has turned to openly terrorist methods to compensate for battlefield setbacks, the Russian president says

The Kiev regime has ramped up drone attacks on Russia’s civilian infrastructure, including repeated strikes on an oil refinery port of Tuapse that risk serious environmental impact, President Vladimir Putin has said. He called the attacks an attempt to compensate for battlefield setbacks.

He spoke about the increased terrorist threat Russia has been facing during a meeting on Tuesday dedicated to the security of the elections set to take place this fall. The threat stems from the activities of international terrorist and extremist groups, as well as from Ukraine, Putin said.

“The Kiev regime and its backers have switched to openly terrorist methods,” the president stated.

The terror tactics are meant to compensate for the setbacks Ukraine has been suffering on the battlefield, Putin noted, adding that such actions will not alter the course of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev.

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He cited attacks on the oil refinery in the Black Sea port of Tuapse, which sparked a multi-day fire, warning of the growing threat posed by Ukrainian long-range strikes against Russia’s civilian infrastructure.

“The latest example is the strikes on energy infrastructure sites in Tuapse, which could potentially have serious environmental implications,” the president said.

Kiev is determined to try to jeopardize the upcoming elections in the formerly Ukrainian regions that integrated into Russia, Putin said, pointing to similar attempts previously.

“I’d like to remind you that they are not holding elections in Ukraine under the pretext of martial law, and they are trying to disrupt ours too,” he said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s energy sector “further increase the oil deficit in global markets, which are already experiencing significant difficulties because of the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, and provoke further destabilization in global energy markets.” 

In recent days, the Tuapse refinery and adjacent marine terminal were repeatedly subjected to long-range drone strikes, sparking repeated fires at the facility. The attacks prompted evacuations of nearby residents and emergency response measures. The prolonged fires produced high-risk air pollution, with residents advised to use respirators, while oil spilled into the sea damaged a long stretch of the beach in the resort town.