The Red Carpet Isn’t What It Used To Be

In an era when social media comments (real and astroturfed) can ruin a celebrity’s reputation, and Hollywood stylists act as powerful arbiters of popular taste, what role does a red carpet dress or tuxedo play?

At Sunday night’s Golden Globes, more than 150 domestic and international outlets crowded on to the red carpet to ask attendees anything but one question: “Who are you wearing tonight?” Well, that, or absolutely anything about politics.

It was an awkward new dawn for the escapist pleasures of awards season dressing, where the red carpet has typically served as a Roman forum for fawning over fashion and designer pageantry. Last week, Laverne Cox announced that she would leave the red carpet hostess gig at E!, reportedly to focus on acting. Laverne’s vintage wardrobe and interview style - buddy-buddy but not toadying, generous to celebrities’ fashion risks and briskly uncritical - made her a totem of the times. Since joining the network in May 2021, she has been a kind of oracle of the red carpet, supplanting that peevy request for designer name-dropping with another query: “What story are you telling with your outfit tonight?”

Instead, the questions from E!’s red carpet hosts - Access Hollywood’s Zuri Hall and comedian Heather McMahan, as well as E! News’s Keltie Knight - were glowing softballs: a bit about the clothing, which mostly offered stars the chance to shout-out a benefactor or the little people. (Ariana Grande thanked her glam team; “without them,” she said, “I’m a potato.”)

A few talked up their look, insofar as it promoted their film: Zoe Saldaña thanked Saint Laurent, which made her dress, for helping to produce her film Emilia Pérez, and Cynthia Erivo illuminated her decision to wear black rather than Elphaba green. There were a lot of questions about what movies and TV shows celebrities were watching, with possibly more mentions of Letterboxd than designer names. There was a slightly bizarre amount of lust around Glen Powell’s presence. And there was practically nothing about causes, politics or even that tried-and-true slogan of valiant vagueness: “With everything going on right now …”

This season of awards shows is poised to reconfigure the function of red carpet pablum. In an era when social media comments (real and astroturfed) can ruin a celebrity’s reputation, and Hollywood stylists have supplanted magazine editors as powerful arbiters of popular taste, what role does a red carpet dress or tuxedo play? What are we looking for in a star’s outfit, and what do we want it to say? Are we in a new era of bland niceties? Whither the withering commentary?

For some, the purpose of commentary is not a thumbs-up or -down. “I try to provide context to what we’re looking at,” said Luke Meagher, a 27-year-old creator with legions of fans for his TikToks and long-form YouTube commentary. “If you’re looking at a Chanel and somebody is like, ‘I don’t know why it looks like she’s wearing a drop-waist dress that is dumpy,’ it’s like, ‘Well, here is how that’s in this Chanel realm.’ You still don’t have to like it. But at least you have the context to say, ‘I understand that, but I still don’t like it.’”

Zanna Roberts Rassi, who anchored the Globes red carpet for Access Hollywood and Today, uses her background as a fashion editor to unpack why a star looks the way they do. “I just roll calls for three days before the awards,” she said, checking with stylists, brands, and hair and makeup artists, peppering her commentary with facts about Ayo Edebiri’s metallic feather getting stuck in customs for two weeks or the arrival of a vogue for brown tones.

The “Who are you wearing?” question, however seemingly innocuous, in fact, ushered in this era of tepid apoliticism. The question - part opportunity to plug the maker of the dress you got for free (or were perhaps even paid to wear), part shorthand explanation for your appearance, part small talk when celebrity small talk was never an art, to begin with - has long unnerved Hollywood. It has made some brands, such as Giorgio Armani, into household names; earned the rancour of feminists for its air of inanity; and even inspired pseudo-protest, complete with buttons.

A decade ago, actors such as Reese Witherspoon began supporting a campaign called #AskHerMore, encouraging carpet correspondents to dig deeper than their designer duds. And at the height of #MeToo, in 2018, celebrities affixed their Globes gowns with black-and-white pins for Time’s Up to raise awareness of sexual harassment. Several attended with activists, who were then somewhat awkwardly tasked with explaining their platform.

Laverne arrived on the heels of this tense moment, softening the political bent but still giving celebrities the chance to spin their narrative through their ensemble. What an outfit said, rather than recognising whether it looked good or bad, was the most important point. Actors could plug the brand that dressed them and look high-minded. That cemented the end of an era dominated by worst- and best-dressed lists, pioneered by the late Joan Rivers and her show Fashion Police, which ran on E! for seven seasons beginning in 2010. She was revered and feared for her shocking send-ups of celebrities. Rivers would joke about anything: Trans women, the Holocaust and race were frequent subjects of her jokes. (Many of her comments, one imagines, wouldn’t fly today.) In the 2010 documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, she shows off file cabinets filled with gibes about high heels, cooking and Tony Danza.

“My mother wasn’t mean − she was funny,” said Melissa Rivers, of her mother who died in 2014. “My mother was the most sensitive, loveliest person. But she went for the laugh. And you can’t take yourself so seriously.”

Melissa said that the current wave of style commentary reflects an increasingly sensitive streak in Hollywood. “Everyone’s like, ‘Why can’t you bring back Fashion Police’? Well, this is how it would go,” Melissa said. “Well, let’s just start with, ‘She’s a beautiful woman. And she’s very body-positive. And she is a great person and usually looks fantastic. I’m not sure this is maybe the best choice she made, but that is not saying that she isn’t amazing and that the designer isn’t a genius who is, by the way, also a really good person and really respects every woman for being a woman and being truly who they are and are a creative genius'. I’m not sure I like their thought process.”

Luke, who first made a name for himself with videos he called “roasts”, picking apart outfits with Rivers-inspired gusto, says some of his fans think he has softened his takes as he tries to gain more access to the industry. “I agree,” he said. “I like going to fashion shows. And I also think it’s really important in order to understand what we’re looking at.”

Still, Melissa said she sees a return to something more blunt: “I feel like the pendulum is starting to swing back a little, to where you can say, ‘I don’t like this’. It doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re a good person!” (Rivers was unafraid to hold back in her criticisms, saying of Ali Wong’s Balenciaga dress: “It looked like it had been left in the garment bag too long. It looked droopy and sad.”)

So what are these commentators now judging by? For Luke, who has the ear of Gen Zers just learning about clothes, it’s the details of pure fashion, like the fact that Cate Blanchett’s Louis Vuitton dress was covered in bugle beads. “It’s those little things that you point out that people can grasp on to and maybe look a little deeper.”

What Melissa looks for is a sort of alchemy between the star, the dress and their moment. She offers Demi Moore, wearing Armani Privé to the Golden Globes, as an example: “This is a woman who has learned throughout time what’s amazing on her,” she said. “It was one of those moments where everything lined up”: her age; her big win, for best female actor in a motion picture (musical or comedy) for The Substance; and her speech about being told that she was merely a “popcorn actress,” someone who could bring in audiences but never play more serious roles. “That was a woman’s dress. A movie star moment. If you put that dress on anyone under the age of 35, it would have looked like they were playing dress-up.”

Zanna is less interested in offering a yay or nay than helping her viewers become the populist critics that red carpet clothes encourage us to be. “You should put your arms around the concept, understand it and be in the sport. It literally is a sport,” she said. “Anyone should be able to watch it, comment on it, have a conversation with your friends about it. It shouldn’t be alienating. It’s glorious to watch. It’s visual escapism.”

Melissa has firmer criteria. “The woman must wear the dress. The dress must not wear the woman,” she said. The wearer has to “own it,” she said − but what does that mean? “First of all, let’s start with the fact that these are all people who have won the genetic lottery.” She laughed. “And, you know, they all know how to stand up straight. They all know how to pose. They all know how to look at a camera.”

“You can tell when someone is insecure in their dress,” she said. Sounds a bit complicated, but maybe a whole lot easier than talking politics.

More from the red carpet

Iconic moments, and personal favourites.

The Coolest Looks At The Golden Globe Awards 2025. Great gowns, beautiful gowns.

Emmy Awards 2024: The Coolest Looks From The Red Carpet. At the 75th Emmy Awards, young Hollywood proved the future is, in fact, bright.

Red Carpet Rewind: Zendaya’s Most Iconic Fashion Moments. The Dune, Challengers and Euphoria actor works strategically with stylist Law Roach, using fashion to yield star power.

Met Gala 2024: The Best Looks From The Red Carpet. We cast our expert eyes across the parade of whimsy and dish out some very specific awards.