CAC grad designs dress for Met Gala, one of the “most-scrutinized fashion events in the world”: Russian-American design student Katya Ekimian described Egypt as the “perfect place to learn to sew” after landing a gig to design a Met Gala dress for the wife of the president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Maya Salam writes for the New York Times. “Fabric was so inexpensive, and there was so much, I just started busting stuff out,” said the 19-year-old, who attended the Cairo American College, where she made prom dresses for herself and her friends. Ekimian’s dress for Sandra Jarva Weiss will make its red carpet debut tomorrow at the Met Gala, often described as “one of the most scrutinized fashion events in the world.”

American author Peter Hessler writes for the New Yorker about memories in Egypt, a country with “fable-like” politics. Hessler and his family moved to Cairo in October 2011 and returned to Colorado in the summer of 2016, witnessing the most eventful period in post-revolution Egypt. Despite the political turmoil, the family toured the country, with tourist sites largely abandoned. “Outside Cairo, politics disappeared,” he said. Hessler’s twin daughters, who were 17 months old when they moved, had no concept of their life before Egypt, and had no sense that it would ever end, he says. “For them, Egypt was um al-duniya.”

On World Press Freedom Day,Amnesty International called on Egyptian authorities to drop charges against jailed photojournalist Shawkan and release him immediately.