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Good news! Method dressing, she’s dead. My personal theory is that Wicked! threw the final bucket of water on her, but the influence of those interminable It Ends With Us florals cannot be overstated, either. Yes, a few actors made subtle nods to their on-screen characters at the 2025 Golden Globes; Eddie Redmayne’s chequerboard Valentino suit, he said, was a riff on The Jackal’s chess obsession, while Timothée Chalamet accessorised his glittering Tom Ford tailoring with a blue Dylan-esque scarf. In general, though, most people were dressed (whisper it) like the high-net-worth adults they are—variously wearing gold, sequins, and gold sequins. Five of the awards’ best-dressed attendees, however, did reference characters both real and imaginary – just not ones they’ve personally played onscreen (at least not yet). Welcome to the era of cosplay dressing.
Ayo Edebiri played a pre-Pretty Woman Julia Roberts
For last night’s ceremony, Ayo Edebiri—whose red-carpet looks are always among Vogue editors’ favorites—deliberately riffed on Julia Roberts’s 1990 Golden Globes suit, which the Steel Magnolias star bought herself in Giorgio Armani’s Rodeo Drive boutique. The The Bear actor turned to Jonathan Anderson rather than Mr. Armani to pull off her tribute, with Loewe’s creative director orchestrating a custom take on a spring 2025 menswear suit for Ayo. “We’ve maybe been talking about this look since October or November,” Edebiri told Vogue of the salute, “so, for the past few days, seeing it bubbling up again has felt like wild kismet.”
Kylie Jenner paid homage to Liz Hurley’s (second) most famous Versace dress
For the second year running, Kylie Jenner accompanied Timothée Chalamet to the Golden Globes – and for the second year running, she wore a dress that nodded to Liz Hurley’s ’90s wardrobe, a time when the model was most frequently photographed on the arm of Hugh Grant. If Jenner’s 2023 look—a 1998 Hanae Mori design—called to mind Hurley’s dress for Elizabeth Taylor’s 65th birthday party at the Pantages Theatre in LA, her 2024 gown was nearly identical to Hurley’s backless, cowl-neck Versace at the 1999 CFDA Awards, albeit in silver rather than lilac. The dress comes from the Italian house’s spring 1999 collection—whose slinky, iridescent slips were perhaps most famously worn by Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss during a joint trip to Versace’s Diamonds Are Forever celebration at London’s Syon House in the run up to the millennium.
Zendaya went runnin’ wild with a Joyce Bryant tribute
Zendaya’s tangerine dream of a Louis Vuitton gown and glittering Bulgari jewelery were somewhat upstaged by the diamond solitaire she wore on her ring finger last night—which is a shame, really, because Z and Law Roach put just as much thought into her outfit as ever. The look was conceived as a tribute to the midcentury African-American singer Joyce Bryant, who performed everywhere from the Copacabana to Casino Royale in the ’40s and ’50s. Specifically, Zendaya appeared to be nodding to the cover of Bryant’s 1954 album, Runnin’ Wild, which featured the nightclub star in a Zelda Wynn Valdes dress against a sunset-orange backdrop.
It’s the kind of silhouette that only Z and Law would dare to deploy (this is the duo, after all, who have made Christian Louboutin’s 12cm-tall So Kates a wardrobe staple). Bryant’s gowns—the vast majority of which were made by Wynn Valdes – were notoriously skintight. “If I had a pimple… you’d see it,” Bryant quipped with journalist Jim Byers. Life put it another way in a 1953 feature on the American sensation: “At her hips, the Belter is so tightly packed in coral-pink silk that she can barely bend, cannot sit down at all… At her knees, the Belter’s dress is so tight that she can hardly perambulate, must walk with shuffling six-inch steps, and must be carried up and down stairs.”
Emma D’Arcy communed with an undead Brad Pitt
Before turning Targaryen for House of the Dragon, Emma D’Arcy spent three years at Oxford’s Ruskin School, and together with stylist Rose Forde, they’ve made an art of red-carpet dressing. As Forde told British Vogue ahead of the Golden Globes: “Because Emma is so intelligent and has great taste, our looks are able to have a little more meat on their bones. I can say, ‘Hey, do you wanna hold this scarf because it has the qualities of a gothic altar piece?’ Most people wouldn’t.” Emma, however, absolutely would, wearing a custom ivory silk foulard by Seán McGirr and SS25 McQueen tailoring to channel Brad Pitt in Neil Jordan’s 1994 film Interview With a Vampire last night. “It needed to feel ceremonial,” Forde summarized of the in-no-way kitschy outfit. “Punk. Like, ‘Would Derek Jarman agree to this reinterpretation of romanticism?’” Safe to say, he would.
Ariana Grande proved she can be a funny-faced fair lady
Admittedly, Ariana Grande did say that the buttery pastel shade of her Givenchy Haute Couture 1966 gown last night was inspired, in part, by the yellow brick road (holding space, etc), but the look was a far cry from the pink parade she led for the global Wicked! tour. Instead—like Grande’s wispy, side-swept fringe at the Palm Springs Film Festival last week—the look was conceived as a nod to Audrey Hepburn, Monsieur de Givenchy’s most famous muse. (From 1956 onward, Hepburn’s movie contracts actually stipulated that the French couturier would make all of her costumes.) And yet this is as much manifest dressing from Grande as it is cosplay dressing; Luca Guadagnino’s Hepburn biopic, which would have seen Rooney Mara playing Audrey, is no longer happening, with rumors swirling that Grande is keen to step into her ballet flats instead. It would be a left-field casting choice, yes – but at least Grande wouldn’t have to be dubbed in any My Fair Lady scenes.