The Cut - Jodie Turner-Smith Takes Control

Originally, Jodie Turner-Smith was supposed to attend the Met Gala with a man on her arm. In her red-carpet fantasy, she and Burberry designer Daniel Lee were to be the figurative bride and groom, she dressed in a bright-white dress with a plunging neckline and 150,000 hand-stitched crystal pearls, and he in a chest-baring tuxedo jacket: the start of a beautiful brand relationship. But the dress was running late, so she arrived like Cinderella, stag to the ball. Afterward on Instagram, she posted photos saying the event was significant as “my first stepping out on my own” with the white symbolizing “rebirth” and “a clean start,” adding, “In nature, death is both an ending *and* a beginning.” The initial sketches of the dress had been a little too sheer, a little too reminiscent of her first Met Gala look in 2022 when she was a brand ambassador for Gucci and wore a kind of naked, metal bralette alongside her husband, Joshua Jackson. Since then, her contract with Gucci had ended and she had filed for divorce from Jackson, citing irreconcilable differences. “I’ve been joking, ‘I lost both my husbands this year,’” she says.

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