Inside the secret world of red carpet dressing
In the last few years there’s been a spate of celebrity offspring posing in their more famous parent’s clothing. We had Gwyneth Paltrow’s daughter Apple Martin trying on her mum’s 2002 Alexander McQueen Oscars dress in her walk-in closet. Carys Zeta Jones borrowed an Emanuel Ungaro Nineties slip dress – originally worn to the MTV Movie Awards – from her mother Catherine Zeta Jones for her 21st birthday. And Salma Hayek lent her daughter Valentina Pinault a vintage Isaac Mizrahi dress (which she’d worn to the Fire and Ice Ball in 1997) for a mummy-and-daughter joint appearance at the Oscars in 2023. All of which points to a surprising truth: A-list stars often keep – or later buy back – their most famous red-carpet looks.
“Of course it depends on the level of celebrity, but a lot of stars do keep their dresses after the red carpet,” shares the celebrity stylist Cassy Meier, who honed her craft as an assistant for Zendaya’s image architect, Law Roach. “We’re also seeing so many more custom pieces made by designers for the red carpet, that aren’t from the runway. In those circumstances, the dresses are never going into production, so of course there’s no reason why that person can’t hold onto the dress – no one else is going to wear it.”
Contrary to what you might think, red carpet looks are often one of one samples from the runway show, which is why you don’t see two celebrities turning up to the BAFTAs in the same Givenchy dress, for example. It also means that there are occasions on which a dress might not arrive in time – if it’s being shot by a magazine for an editorial, or used in a trunk fashion show, for example. Another reason why you don’t often see celebrities wearing the same things on different occasions? The fashion houses pre-warn stylists, who unless they are confident that they will win a battle of ‘who wore it best’ steer clear of repeating looks.
While today celebrity styling is de rigueur, it was basically non-existent in the 1990s, when it was far more common for A-listers to buy the pieces that they wore for the red carpet (it’s also why there was a much more laid back approach to event fashion then too) or call in a favour from a friend or up-and-coming designer. In this way, it’s no surprise that Zeta Jones and Hayek, who were both at the beginning of their careers during that era, have kept their designer looks to pass on to their daughters – they owned them in the first place.
And while it’s not known if Paltrow bought or was gifted the Alexander McQueen look for her 2002 Oscars appearance (she didn’t start working with her stylist, Elizabeth Saltzman, until after she was floored by criticism of the no-bra look), the third door option would be that she tasked a fashion archivist with tracking it down and buying it back. One such archivist is Julie Ann Clauss, whose business, The Wardrobe, tracks down and stores pieces for high-profile celebrity clients, including Chloe Sevingy.
Having been recruited by Tom Ford to start his archive when he left Gucci in 2004, Clauss is used to some good old-fashion detective work. “I was meeting with dealers all the time, scouring eBay and other random vintage sites,” she shares. “And it was a time when vintage was nowhere near as expensive as it is now – and it was stuff that wasn’t in fashion at the time, so it was so much cheaper to buy back.”
Whether it was the Nineties or they just didn’t have the sartorial clout to keep a designer look, Clauss has plenty of high-profile clients who pay her to track down historic pieces for their archives now. “Some mega stars didn't have the budget for designer clothes when they first started out, or they didn’t know something was going to become so iconic,” she explains. “So I have clients where we have found these pieces and purchased them back for the archive.”
Today, it is becoming more commonplace for designers to try to keep their pieces – often for their own archives – though even then everyone has their price. “Some celebrities will ask to buy a piece,” says Clauss. “Sometimes it might even be in their contract that they get to keep it if they are famous enough.” Of course, if a celebrity has a specific contract with a fashion house, they are more likely to be able to keep the looks too.
Her clients’ pieces are stored together in what she describes as ‘mini-museums’ at her warehouses in Los Angeles and New York, sometimes with the shoes and accessories that make up the look – though not the jewellery, that’s always returned. And while Clauss and her team can clean everything up and ensure it is preserved in the correct environment, with the temperature, humidity and light controlled, there are some clients who prefer their pieces to bear the signs of the event they were worn to. “Some of my clients trash their clothes,” she laughs. “They like it to show what happens on tour, or, you know, how something might get ripped in a quick change, the pieces are lived in.”
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