Jodie Turner-Smith looked angelic in a flowing white gown at the 2024 Met Gala, but in a new Instagram post, the model and actor described how the look was inspired by her heartbreaking split last year from husband Joshua Jackson.
“This met gala was a very special one for me… my first stepping out on my own,” she wrote in the post, alongside images of herself in the floral Daniel Lee gown at Monday night’s event in New York City.
“I had many thoughts after reading the short story that the theme was based on… but what i took away from it was a desire to represent both the power of nature and the delicacy of it. in nature, death is both an ending *and* a beginning,” she continued. “When you prune away that which is dead, new buds are free to grow.”
The dress code for the gala this year was “The Garden of Time,” inspired by English author J.G. Ballard’s 1962 short story of the same name and the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s spring exhibition, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.” As Turner-Smith noted, it was her first time attending fashion’s biggest night solo, without Jackson, as she divorced her husband of nearly four years last October.
She said in her post, “Fitting, then, that the dress #DanielLee designed for me, full of english flowers, was deliberately bridal. White, representing a rebirth. a clean start. a recommitment to the most important relationship i will ever have, the relationship from which all others grow: my relationship with myself. it is through loving and honouring myself that i am able to love and honour my daughter, and teach her to do the same.”
Turner-Smith and Jackson, who married in 2019, share one daughter, Juno Rose Diana Jackson, whom they welcomed in April 2020. Since their split, Jackson has begun dating fellow actor Lupita Nyong’o.
Turner-Smith concluded her post, “I am ever changing, ever growing, always beginning… and FREE, to love better, stronger, more fiercely and fearlessly than i ever have 💞 THANK YOU ENDLESSLY, @burberry, for your support and your creativity and your love. can’t wait to see what’s next…!!!!!”