Over the past few years, vintage and archival fashion has become increasingly popular on the red carpet. There are many benefits to this development, vintage is better for the environment and it can’t be sewn by low-paid (or underage) workers. So we can all feel good about that. Plus, the classic looks that stylists have created for their clients over the years are truly amazing: Jared Ellner’s work with Sabrina Carpenter and Law Roach’s work for Zendaya come to mind.
However, recently the trend has gone a step further and become a meta-archival trend, in which a celebrity wears a vintage dress on the red carpet that another celebrity wore years ago. The obsession with recreating these moments has even inspired some celebrities – who couldn’t get their hands on the original, iconic vintage clothing – to wear exact replicas, in which case I’m all about the environment. Of everything.
As a society, we’d be better off in the early 2000s when it came to “Who dressed better?” (you) dressing up for photos. We’re living in a whole new era now: today, if you wear the same outfit that another celebrity has already worn, it’s no longer considered unnecessary; Everyone has been paying tribute to Angelina Jolie lately, and I first noticed this when I saw the headline “Sydney Sweeney pays tribute to Angelina Jolie.” For a moment, I thought Angelina Jolie was dead, until I saw that they were referring to her Marc Bouvier dress, which Jolie wore to the 2004 Oscars.
Swinney is not alone. This summer, Blake Lively wore a Versace dress worn by Britney Spears in her 2002 film It Ends With Us, which makes repeated appearances. Alexa Chung attended the Serpentine Summer Party in London, recreating the iconic green dress worn by Keira Knightley in Atonement. At the recent VMAs, Tate McRae recreated the dress worn by Britney Spears at the 2001 ceremony, while at the same event, Sabrina Carpenter paid homage to Madonna by sampling the Bob Mackie dress she originally wore – ironically – to Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Pay homage in 1991. At this rate, someday in the future I would like to see Kay Malik pay homage to Sabrina Carpenter, pay homage to Madonna, pay homage to Marilyn Monroe.
Many of these looks look undeniably glamorous when given new context, as if the ghost of the celebrity who last wore them is walking the red carpet and the new celebrity is yelling, “I approve!” That’s not always the case, though. Kim Kardashian wearing the Bob Mackie dress originally worn by Marilyn Monroe for President John F. Kennedy at the 2022 Met Gala “Happy Birthday” may have really opened the door for this trend. The move was widely criticized, not least by Mackie himself, who was concerned about the legacy of a garment designed by an icon and for an icon, and (more importantly) the structural integrity of the archival garments.
Seeing these tributes on my feed over the last few months, I wondered if they were a sign that the fashion world was stagnating. This trend of combining two pillars of American culture — idolatry and nostalgia — seems similar to the current state of the film industry which is constantly repurposing old IPs and making superhero sequels. Or maybe it’s an attempt to gain an advantage in a highly saturated culture — because another celebrity wore it before you, their influence can reach you through fashion. It’s as if a reference to another moment is like adding an accessory to an outfit, such as a signature handbag. But it’s not clear to me that this effect would work, and anyway, who can say if the original celebrity would have approved of this whole endeavor?
Of course, there’s a clear difference between choosing an iconic moment to pay true tribute to, and creating your own moment. I won’t name the latter, but the result feels weak and stale at times. For the former, the real tribute that comes to mind is Miley Cyrus honoring her godmother Dolly Parton’s iconic bouffant hair at the Grammys, or whenever Kate Middleton imitates her late mother-in-law, Princess Diana.
People say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but having a younger sister, I can only say that’s bullshit. Imitation may be a true form of flattery, but it also has the potential to diminish the value of the original work by creating a caricature of itself. This has always been a problem with replication. Every time a scene is repeated, it begins to lose its original nuances, similar to how the more a meme is meme-ified, the more bland it becomes until, eventually, the original thing loses all its meaning.
Stylist Molly Dixon recently created a reimagined Hervé Léger dress for Kaia Gerber, which her mother, Cindy Crawford, wore to the 1993 Oscars. “I thought it would be cool to pay homage to Cindy’s iconic moment,” Dixon told Esquire. A few weeks later, Susan Sarandon’s daughter Eva Amurri rewore her mother’s 2003 Donna Curran Oscars gown to the Metropolitan Opera’s opening night seating. “Keep swiping to see where I got this @donnakarran vintage dress,” she wrote on Instagram.
Last weekend I went into my mom’s closet to find something to wear to a friend’s wedding. Obviously my mom is not Cindy Crawford or Susan Sarandon, but given this new trend, I feel a little different when I walk into her closet – I’m not like a teenager who needs to wear something, but like I’m going to wear a rack of old classics in preparation for my comeback. I chose the John Galliano for Christian Dior dress she wore to the 56th Emmy Awards in 2004. However, when she saw the photos of me wearing it “without her permission,” to say the least, she was not happy. Also, I accidentally cut my ankle and my disgusting blood almost got on that lavender dress.
“Really, Qazi?” that is (even though the dry cleaners had originally thrown it away!).
I told him it was a tribute.
