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 cannot 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 clients over the years are amazing (Jared Ellner and Sabrina Carpenter’s work, Law Roach for Zendaya).
Recently, however, this trend has taken it a step further and can be described as 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 leaving the early 2000s days of “Who wore it better?” (especially hotter than you). 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 but rather a tribute. Everyone has been paying tribute to Angelina Jolie lately, and I first noticed it 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 2002 and also replicated it in her film It Ends With Us. Alexa Chung attended the Serpentine Gallery Summer Party in London wearing 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 tribute to Madonna by wearing a sample of Madonna’s original Bob Mackie dress – ironically the same tribute to Marilyn in 1991. Gentlemen love a tribute to blonde Monroe. At this rate, someday in the future I would like to see Kay Malik do a tribute to Sabrina Carpenter, a tribute to Madonna, a tribute to Marilyn Monroe.
Many of these looks look undeniably glamorous when given new context, such as when the ghost of the celebrity who last wore them is walking down the red carpet and the new celebrity yells, “I approve!” That’s not always the case, though. Kim Kardashian wore a Bob Mackie pair originally worn by Marilyn Monroe when she sang “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy to the 2022 Met Gala, a move that may or may not have actually opened the door for the trend to take off. The move was widely criticized, especially by Mackie himself, who, concerned about the legacy of a dress designed for an icon, expressed his disapproval of a dress for being passed on despite protests from designers, fashion patrons, and the public — and there seems to be no end to it.
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, which combines two pillars of American culture — idolatry and nostalgia — seems similar to the current state of the film industry, known for constantly reinventing 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. Another moment that seems to be referenced is 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’s to 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 that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but having a younger sister, I can only say that this is nonsense. 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 an expression is repeated, it begins to lose its original subtlety, just like the more a meme is remembered, the more obscure it becomes until eventually it loses its entire original meaning.
Stylist Molly Dixon recently styled Kaia Gerber in a look that replicated the Hervé Léger dress 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 recreated her mother’s 2003 Donna Curran Oscars dress at the Metropolitan Opera’s Opening Night Gala. “Keep scrolling to see where I got this @donnakarran vintage dress…,” she wrote on Instagram.
Last weekend I had to go into my mom’s wardrobe looking for something to wear to a friend’s wedding. Obviously my mom is no Cindy Crawford or Susan Sarandon, but given this new trend, I feel different when I go into her wardrobe, I don’t feel like a teenager who needs to wear something, but rather feel like I’m searching the shelves for old classic clothes that are about to make a comeback. I chose the John Galliano for Christian Dior dress that she wore to the 56th Emmy Awards in 2004. However, when she saw the pictures of me wearing it “without her permission”, she was not happy at all. 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.
