Zendaya will not be at the New York City Met Gala on Monday, ending speculation that the actor would return to one of fashion’s biggest nights after appearing there last year in an all-white Louis Vuitton suit.
The absence is notable because Zendaya had been visible on both coasts in the days before the event. She was photographed in Sherman Oaks, California, on Wednesday supporting Tom Holland at his Bero Padel Classic event, then seen shooting a campaign for On in New York City on Thursday. Holland has never attended the fashion event, and his girlfriend’s decision to skip this year means the couple will remain out of the Met Gala frame for now.
The timing also lands as Zendaya moves through two press tours nearly at once, for The Drama and Euphoria season 3, while talking more openly about the way her style developed. In a recent Vogue interview with Law Roach, she said her parents let her express herself through clothing when she was a child, and that she spent her early years picking her own outfits instead of wearing perfectly matched school clothes. She added that experimenting with clothes mattered, because few people are chic their whole life and awkward phases are part of figuring out who you are.
That backdrop helps explain why her Met Gala absence will be noticed. Zendaya has become one of the event’s most watched arrivals, but this year she is elsewhere, working and moving between obligations rather than stepping onto the Met steps. For Monday’s gala, the answer to the question of when is the Met Gala comes with a sharper one: Zendaya will not be there.