There are few people more closely entwined with the New York City Ballet’s annual Fall Fashion Gala than Sarah Jessica Parker. She conceived the event in 2012 as a meeting point between two creative disciplines—inviting fashion designers to work directly with choreographers on costumes—and, 14 years later, remains its founding chair. This year’s program brought three new works to the David H. Koch Theater, including a pas de deux by NYCB resident choreographer Justin Peck, dressed by Simone Rocha and set to Gabriel Kahane’s mirror/sky (landslide), an original composition inspired by Stevie Nicks’s “Landslide.”
For Parker, the enduring thrill is in what these imaginative collaborations might bring to the ballet. “The possibility that tonight there will be new audiences there for a variety of reasons,” she tells Vogue. “Because someone reached out to them and invited them for the first time. Because of Stevie Nicks. Because of Justin Peck.” Over the years, she says, fashion and ballet have come to “fit together so beautifully,” drawing more eyes toward the company in the process.
For the October 1 gala, Parker naturally turned to Simone Rocha herself. “I always try to wear one of the designers,” she says of her approach to dressing for the evening. “My goal is to wear something that the designer is excited about and that sometimes reflects the artistry that they’ve put into conversations with the choreographer.” Her verdict on the finished look was characteristically succinct: “It’s Simone Rocha. Classic. Magical.” (Across 14 years of Fall Fashion Galas, Parker has dressed the part opulently: capes, tutu-like silhouettes, monumental bows, and, last year, Iris van Herpen wings.)
Rocha developed Parker’s dress from an existing show piece, reworking its hand-laced, unraveling ribbons in a pale ballet pink intended as a nod to pointe shoes. The resulting gown was almost balletic in its own right: a sheer, delicately embroidered floor-length dress threaded with long satin ribbons that spilled vertically down the body. Against it, Parker’s hair—by Serge Normant—was pulled into an intricate, ribbon-woven braid, continuing that sense of movement from neckline to hem.
