Barbie, Wicked, Wuthering Heights: many a fashion fan, like me, may remember the red carpet looks more readily than the actual film. And it seems that could be part of the point. The lead-up events and premieres are now designed to create as much promotion as possible, whether through small stunts—who remembers Timothée Chalamet arriving on a lime bike?—rumoured cast romances, or, most notably right now, fashion. In what has been dubbed red carpet method dressing.
"For the big blockbuster films, there are no cons to it," says fashion stylist and consultant Itunu Oke. "It really benefits the build-up to the film and it's great for designers too, so I think it's here to stay." It has certainly entered new trend territory, however, one that only seems to be growing, with cracks perhaps beginning to emerge in the concept.
"You definitely wouldn't have seen this in the 90s or early 00s," Oke adds. "You wouldn't see JLo method dressing for the Maid in Manhattan premiere, or even the cast of Clueless dressing for their premiere."
In today's world, where new films are released more regularly than ever, news feels fleeting and trending moments compete endlessly with countless other events across the globe, this extra avenue for PR feels almost necessary, and, in some cases, expected, changing the very reasoning behind a premiere.
Margot Robbie's Barbie press tour outfits generated an impressive volume of articles, social media posts and real-life conversations before the film had even been released—perhaps contributing to its £276m opening weekend, the biggest debut ever for a film directed by a woman. A tactic Robbie deployed again, with plenty of success, in the lead-up to Wuthering Heights.
And then there was Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, whose contrasting Wicked outfits worked in precisely the same way, setting new box office records for a Broadway adaptation in the process.
This style of method dressing "definitely helps with the whole lead-up to the film because it builds the hype and there is bound to be so much talk around the looks. I think it also helps that there are so many premieres, so many more opportunities to show different looks and work with different designers," notes Oke, many of those looks being custom creations.
The common denominator in each of the cases above, however, was the strength of the theme and characters at the heart of the film. A quality that isn't readily available in every project, particularly those that don't fall within the fantasy realm. Which makes replicating the same method dressing approach across the board feel, at best, ambitious.
Take The Devil Wears Prada 2, where Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Meryl Streep step back into characters they last inhabited 20 years ago. A highly anticipated film whose press tour looks have already drawn criticism—the bar, it turns out, is now impossibly high. “I am a huge fan of the film and of the actors,” says Marie Claire’s Fashion Director, Lily Russo-Bah. “However, as I followed the press tour, I wasn’t sure what I was watching. In isolation, the outfits themselves were fine — beautiful, even — but were they coordinating their looks intentionally or not? It certainly appeared so, judging by the sea of red and black, overwhelmingly matching the film’s logo, visible behind them, and the red carpet. There were even moments when Lady Gaga and Anne Hathaway wore the same style of dress, just in different colours on the same night.”
Though perhaps expectation itself has become the problem, far more so than the actual outfits.
"I don't think it's a strong enough theme. What would it be? Fashion? What more do you expect. High fashion brands have been worn. I think they've worn what's right for them and not what their character would wear, which I love," says Oke.
Perhaps that, in itself, is the most interesting twist of all: that the fashion in the lead-up to the films is drawing equal amounts of interest as what actually happens on the screen.
