At the 2025 Golden Globes, attendees recalled various ages gone by on the red carpet, giving method dressing a bit of a rest. Old Hollywood glamor, it seems, really is here to stay.
Opera gloves made a marked return, following a pique in interest in the old-world accessory over the last few years. (Just see Carey Mulligan in long velvet gloves and an archival ’50s Balenciaga gown at last year’s Oscars, and updated versions on runways from Vaquera to JW Anderson.) For the Globes, Kerry Washington and Ali Wong—both in Balenciaga—wore black, bicep-skimming formal gloves, creating a striking contrast with their hot pink and cherry red dresses, respectively. (Washington’s diamond ring slipped over her glove? Okay, Miss Lauren Bacall!) And Pamela Anderson, who was up for her lead performance in The Last Showgirl—a film in which the burlesque-inspired costumes lean more sensual—chose to return to the Golden Globes after a 19-year absence in a high-drama black glove set cinched with a diamond bracelet.
Elsewhere, Ariana Grande divested herself from the Wicked way of dressing for the evening—though her look wouldn’t look entirely out of place in Glinda’s wardrobe: She opted for white gloves, paired with a butter yellow beaded and petal-skirted Givenchy haute couture gown from 1966. It seemed a significant portion of attendees were gunning for the main role in that long-rumored Audrey Hepburn biopic with their looks (which is, allegedly, in development and set to star Rooney Mara—but who’s going to get in Grande’s way right now?).
Some took the Gilded Age vibes much more literally. Demi Moore, picking up her first award in her 45-year career, took to the stage in a dazzling gold Armani Privé gown, so sharp and clean in its lines that she looked like a statuette herself. Angelina Jolie wore a braided silver look from Seán McGirr’s second collection for Alexander McQueen, and Cate Blanchett rewore a custom gold sequinned Louis Vuitton gown, with caped shoulders that recalled silhouettes beloved by Katharine Hepburn.
Dramatic draping and bold ball gowns gave other stars a distinctly 1940s-into-the-’50s feel. Elle Fanning—who has been exploring the aesthetics of the ’60s in line with her turn in A Complete Unknown—wore a rose gold custom Balmain ball gown with a voluminous skirt and leopard print accents on the bust, directly inspired by a 1953 Balmain look. The old-school dream was kept alive in the details, too: the red Dolce & Gabbana gown on Elle’s sister Dakota, with its silky scarf thrown over her shoulder, harked back to Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. (Dakota, too, was at the Globes supporting a mid-century-inspired project: Steven Zaillian’s noirish Ripley.) Naomi Watts’s custom Schiaparelli, on the other hand, with its black corseted top and blooming, blush-pink bottom half, recalled the ’fits of Ava Gardner.
Vintage, of course, harnessed the real old Hollywood energy. Anya Taylor-Joy’s soft pink bias-cut gown with a matching fringed shawl from Galliano-era spring 1998 Dior spoke to the airs of Elizabeth Taylor and Marlene Dietrich—and trust that Taylor-Joy moved across the red carpet with all the requisite drama.
The storytelling continued with more focused, intentional referencing to the past: Zendaya’s stylist Law Roach shared that her look, a custom tangerine ball gown from Louis Vuitton, was a stylish homage to Joyce Bryant, the boundary-breaking Black club singer and Hollywood bombshell of the 1940s.
Beauty was also indebted to nostalgic cinematic glamour. Grande kept her baby bangs in place à la Holly Golightly, while Emilia Pérez and Only Murders in the Building star Selena Gomez parted her hair to the side for retro-feeling waves. And Babygirl’s Nicole Kidman and The Substance’s Margaret Qualley went big with bouffants and long half-up, half-down hairstyles.
In looking to the past, the sartorial vocabulary of the evening was powerfully feminine. Timeless elegance? You will always be famous.