Consider each annual awards season—starting with the Golden Globes in January and ending with the Academy Awards in March—a series of events that unfold to reveal the moment’s updated definition of glamour. Is it hard, stringy, close to the vest? Camp? Understated, with respect to dramatic world events? High game about bending the approach to a hit dress just off the runway? Or simply a celebration of hot pink?
All these trends have dominated at different times during the last decade. And they’re important aside from telling us seemingly pointless facts that every stylist has been thinking about bustiers this year!, or whatever. After all, red carpet trends aren’t just trends; they are the ultimate embodiment of American fashion values, which are almost always embedded in the nexus of two topics on which every American considers himself an expert: fame and beauty.
Last night’s Globes red carpet seemed to be a command that movie stars are still movie stars, and even if Hollywood doesn’t feel so much like Hollywood trying to get moviegoers back into theaters, it can still wear the right costume and say the right lines. It can still hit sequins and sparkle, long-eyed women smiling demurely in statuette-like gowns. If this look feels conservative to you, so be it. There is a spirit of old-fashioned Hollywood chutzpah, putting on a show for tired people at home. We might have earned it after the camp overload that started leaking just before bonanza Met Gala 2019 and then he exhausted himself until everyone seemed to be wearing chicken feathers and wailing that it was chic. (Michelle Williams, having a bit of fun in a wobbly cotton-crisp ivory Gucci, might have been one of the campers at this year’s Globes, but she’s usually so chic that I enjoyed the wink.)
Michelle Williams in Gucci.
Even Billy Porter played it safe; his pink velvet dress certainly looked familiar, and that was because as he said Today, it was an “homage” to the dress he wore to the 2019 Oscars, which was also a velvet tuxedo designed by Christian Siriano. When it’s no longer camp, the only thing you can do is treat a dress from four years ago like serious vintage. (Thatcamp!)
Last night’s standout looks – women looking confident, content, delighted, alive to the possibilities of clothing on their figures – were fitted (no full skirts or mermaid silhouettes!), sequined, sleek and well jeweled. Angela Bassett, who won Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, undoubtedly owned the evening. Her Pamella Roland dress was silver with a halter neckline and a delicate vertical sequin pattern that almost made it look like wire mail or retro-futuristic cable knit. It moved with snug intimacy. Sometimes a dress that flows over the body has a declaratively personal effect: glitter for you, form fitting for me. Even Jennifer Coolidge, rightfully smoldering in a long-sleeve Dolce & Gabbana sheath (with Monica Vitti hair from Tanya McQuoid’s dreams!) seemed to tell us as much.
Angela Bassett in Pamela Roland.
Jennifer Coolidge in Dolce & Gabbana.
Many of the best looks of the night were from stars over 50. In addition to Bassett and Coolidge, Sigourney Weaver was there, in one of the best Saint Laurent celebrity dressing moments we’ve had in the last year. (And that’s saying something — they’ve got Hailey Bieber on their side!) The black silk dress with dolman sleeves seemed to go down into a beautiful drape that met beneath a black flower at the bust, creating a shape that was just a little blas- wonderful. , a sense of casual yet supercharged elegance that Saint Laurent creative director Anthony Vaccarello has mastered over the past few seasons. Then there was Michelle Yeoh, v yowza a strapless Armani Privé dress that was covered in both sequins and rhinestones, making the dress look like shimmering oil suspended in water. It was winner‘s dress, and indeed took home the award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy Everything and everywhere at once.
Sigourney Weaver in Saint Laurent.
Michelle Yeoh in Armani Privé.
If there was a surprise, it came in the form of what No become. Given the fervor surrounding vintage fashion – sorry Dahling, archival-I was expecting a lot of deep drafts from, say, John Galliano-era Dior or Karl Lagerfeld-era Chanel or some humdinger Valentino. But the only archive giant was the host of E! on the red carpet, Laverne Cox, in John Galliano’s Spring 2007 snakeskin jersey with gold sequins that conjured the usual, if hackneyed, Gallianoisms (Deco, fin-de-siècle Paris, ’80s nightclub glee).
Laverne Cox in John Galliano Spring 2007.
Nor did we get to see any of the impressive moments off the runway, like when Zendaya wore a Loewe dress just days (or days) after it debuted on the Paris runway in 2021. before appeared on the runway, just like last fall). These are important, in case you were wondering, because they tell us what brands have bet on the world of designer Hollywood stylists, creating a sort of scripted bridge between dream and real life.
The exception was Letitia Wright, stunning in a dress from Prada’s spring 2023 collection: a body of water of warm but striking orange flecks on white silk. I loved how light and sensual it was crisp the dress looked – a mood that is difficult to impress and impress at such an event.
Another semi-exception: Margot Robbie in a pale pink Chanel dress reworked from the Fall 2022 collection. Again: aerodynamic, classic, no-nonsense, pretty sparkly dazzle right at the halter. Robbie’s stans are abuzz on Twitter when he wears Chanel, but like Kristen Stewart, I think he wears Virginia Viard’s eternally understated clothes with personality, like he’s writhing in a primarily girlish fantasy. (Barbiecore, but not annoying.)
Letitia Wright in Prada, from the Spring 2023 collection.
Margot Robbie in Chanel Couture.
There was one truly original look and that was it House of dragons actress Emma D’Arcy, dressed in an oversized tuxedo jacket with a flowing rosette and trousers with a skirt panel, a tailored look for menswear for Fall 2023. D’Arcy wore tiny glittery pointy shoes and blue leather gloves to accentuate the shade their messy hair. described the appearance E! thus: “The vibe is like a piano prodigy and maybe the recital didn’t go well.” So amazing. It was a rare example of a red carpet in which the wearer was styled so clearly and creatively expressed that you feel they look really comfortable and inspiring.
Emma D’Arcy in Acne Studios.
Another missing factor? An array of the entertainment industry’s leading fashion lights. We haven’t seen Zendaya, who has started several red carpet trends in past years paired with her stylist Law Roach. We also didn’t get a Cate Blanchett look, which is disappointing given the creative way her stylist, Elizabeth Stewart, helped her curate Lydia Tár’s inimitable off-screen wardrobe (call it… her Tár Power? Yuk yuk yuk!) and encouraged the star to she re-dressed and reworked previous red carpet looks, which is frankly a revolutionary concept. No Lady Gaga either, and it almost looked like we weren’t going to get the Rihanna look we were promised until — oh, there she was, sitting next to boyfriend A$AP Rocky, wearing custom Schiaparelli and skipping the red carpet! (Chic!!!) The look, in the words of the press release: “a black velvet bustier dress with a silk jersey drape with a voluminous black bonded silk velvet stole.” Pretty old Hollywood to wear a fitted strapless black dress with a cape, except Rihanna didn’t look only as a vintage star. With a freakishly enormous wrap and fabulous curly braided hair, she donned her own futuristic Rihanna look that we thought we knew all too well. Maybe there Yippee there’s some celebrity ingenuity left in Hollywood!
Rihanna in a custom look by Schiaparelli.
Rachel Tashjian is the director of fashion news at the company Harper’s Bazaar, working across print and digital platforms. She used to be GQThe first fashion critic and worked as a deputy editor GARAGE and as a writer on Vanity Fair. She wrote for publications including Bookforum and Artforumand is the creator of the invitation-only Opulent Tips newsletter.