Rosamund Pike’s Golden Globes veil and the mystery ski accident
The Golden Globes red carpet, so soon after the sensorial overload of Christmas, used to be a warm up for the seemingly endless sequence of awards ceremonies that follow in its wake, full of forgettable or should-be-forgotten looks. Who’s really thinking about corsets and diets on 26th December?
Rosamund Pike, for one. “Is it a helmet, is it a hat?“ enquired an excitable reporter to Pike of her headwear. “It’s a protective veil,” responded Pike, who explained she’d smashed her face up in a skiing accident on the 26th of December.
Fortunately for Pike, sartorial surgery from Phillip Treacy was but an email away. Treacy, who relishes drama, stepped up with some black chantilly lace headwear that, as the reporter’s befuddled questioning suggests, defies strict categorisation.
“Some lace” doesn’t do justice to the exquisitely constructed bubble of sheer lace that’s part fencing millinery, part Henry James, which perfectly balanced the sweeping ballerina-length, full-skirted black chantilly lace dress Pike wore with it. The latter is from a 2019 Dior couture collection designed by Maria Grazia Chiuri, the house’s Creative Director of Womenswear. Pike is a friend of the brand and having the run of its archives is one of the perks. Styled by Leith Clark, who also dresses Gugu Mbatha Raw, Pike accessorised the netted dress with platform sandals and white diamonds, ear cuffs and rings from Boucheron.
Pike has form, both on screen and on red carpets, of stealing the show even when she doesn’t have the lead. During the pandemic era of digital awards ceremonies, her huge crimson frothy Molly Goddard raised the temperature of the admittedly tepid Globes in 2021.
She likes drama too. The truth is, her ski wound had healed by Sunday night. In any case, Hollywood’s army of dermatologists and makeup artists can disguise anything (last year, Scarlet Johansson told me about the cortisol injections that are regularly given just before the awards to stars who have been smited with breakouts). “I rather fell in love with the veil,” Pike admitted.
It’s also consistent with something Lady Eslpeth Catton, her brittle, amoral character in Saltburn might have worn (Margot Robbie’s run of Barbie red carpet outfits may have set the trend for actors continuing to channel their role during the publicity junkets).
Saltburn has polarised audiences, but Pike’s deadpan comedic turn in it is delicious and more than worthy of her Best Supporting Actress nomination.
Nor will it have escaped her that while wearing as little as possible on a red carpet was a sure way of grabbing a front page slot last year, the law of diminishing returns will eventually reassert itself. And so it is, that straight out of the starters’ block of awards season 2024, Pike’s demure, Portrait of a Lady veil, has become the talking point to beat.
