Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the wider world.
Over the past few decades, endless boundaries about what is appropriate to wear on the red carpet have been not just pushed, but hurdled. Fully sheer looks? Bring them on. Double denim? No less than Chloë Sevigny has made it work, so good luck raising eyebrows there.
But this awards season, the most striking trend has been not trangression, but tradition. Young stars like Mikey Madison, Selena Gomez, Elle Fanning, Zendaya, and Ariana Grande are emulating the goddesses of Hollywood’s Golden Age. For the Critics Choice Awards, Madison wore a strapless black-and-white gown with matching gloves. Her look was vintage Giorgio Armani, dating back only to 1992, but clearly ’50s-inspired—and created by a designer synonymous with the Hollywood establishment, no less.
Mikey Madison at the Critics Choice Awards in vintage Giorgio Armani.
For an actress like Madison, who’s less seasoned than many of her fellow nominees but earning raves for her Anora role, these old-school aesthetics have helped her assume the persona of a more mature contender, with the help of her stylist Jamie Mizrahi. Others have traded on more direct resemblances: Fanning channeled Grace Kelly at last year’s Golden Globes in a vintage Balmain gown, and for this year’s ceremony she wore a custom Balmain look with a leopard-print bodice, a recreation of the house’s “reversed champagne flute” gown from fall 1953. (Fanning works with stylist Samantha McMillen.) It feels like an extension of method dressing: dress for the job you want (an award-winning Hollywood diva of yore) and you might just go home with a statuette.
At the Grammys, Sabrina Carpenter, styled by Jared Ellner, referenced Shirley MacLaine’s backless, bejeweled look in the 1964 comedy What a Way to Go! in a feather-trimmed piece by JW Anderson. And Ariana Grande drew rumors of an Audrey Hepburn biopic with a yellow Givenchy column gown and gloves from the house’s spring 1966 couture collection. While Grande disavowed the whispers about playing the style icon, she did reveal that Hepburn is perpetually on her mood board. “I’ve always gravitated toward ’50s, ’60s silhouettes, and retro vintage,” she told Access Hollywood. “My stylist, Mimi [Cuttrell], and I have been leaning all the way in.”
Sabrina Carpenter wears JW Anderson at the Grammys.
Nostalgia for Old Hollywood and midcentury studio splendor is also driving the trend. Amid streaming-only premieres and shrinking budgets, the movie business is no longer the bastion of glamour it once was. Brady Corbet, the director of one of the most nominated films this year, recently let slip that he has made “zero dollars” from it. This retro cosplay is a way for Hollywood to nod to some sense of continuity in a time when even famous actors and directors are essentially gig workers. On the red carpet, the fantasy is still being sold.
Ariana Grande in vintage Givenchy at the Golden Globes.
And, much like with this season’s runways, there is a reactionary aftertaste to all this veneration of the past. Less gender-fluid, experimental fashion and more extreme, throwback expressions of femininity have been evident. On the red carpet, this subconscious longing for a quote-unquote simpler time makes itself plain in strapless silhouettes, gloves, trains, and retro hair and makeup.
Elle Fanning at the 2025 Golden Globes in a custom recreation of a Balmain dress from 1953.
Finally, the overwhelming impact of vintage on the red carpet, and particularly very targeted vintage pulls (like Law Roach putting Zendaya in Thierry-era Mugler and McQueen-era Givenchy for Dune: Part Two, or Andrew Mukamal sourcing ’90s Versace and Chanel for Margot Robbie’s Barbie whirlwind) has led to stars opting for, if not actual vintage, extremely vintage-inspired looks. Case in point: Selena Gomez, who wore a pale-blue off-the-shoulder Prada gown complete with ribbon train to the Golden Globes, and a navy Celine style to the SAG Awards that she paired with a red lip. While her looks weren’t vintage or recreations, both easily could have been, based on their silhouettes.
Selena Gomez in Prada at the Golden Globes.
When actual vintage is on the menu, rather than IYKYK ’90s and aughts fashion-girl favorites like Galliano-era Dior—made to set high-fashion Twitter scrambling to post side-by-side comparisons—the allusions go much further back. After Nicola Coughlan’s stylist Aimee Croysdill spotted a ’50s Dior dress in a coffee table book, she worked with the house on a custom dress inspired by that design, which Coughlan wore to this year’s SAG Awards. Who needs a new look when you have the New Look?
Nicola Coughlan at the SAG Awards in custom Dior, inspired by a ’50s New Look design.