The Divine Red-Carpet Looks of “The Odyssey” Press Tour
Hollywood stars have been dressing up for movie premières for almost as long as there have been movie premières. As early as the nineteen-twenties, fans would line up outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to catch a glimpse of actresses, decked out in slinky bias-cut gowns and feather boas, as they sauntered between their town cars and the theatre, assaulted by flashbulbs along the way. But, for the most part, stars felt no pressure to dress up like the films they were promoting. Judy Garland chose not gingham but sequins and white fur during the press tour for “The Wizard of Oz.” Why would anyone choose to remain in a dowdy costume, when she could ooze with glamour instead?
Of course, through the years, there have been examples of actors drawing sartorial inspiration from their projects—in 1992, for example, Geena Davis wore a white minidress emblazoned with baseball stitching for the première of “A League of Her Own”—but the examples are few and far between. Movie stars of the past, the memorable ones, anyway, had their own signature sense of style; they didn’t need to borrow from a film to cultivate it. Then, around five years ago, a strange phenomenon started to pop up, as stars stepped out on red carpets in glammed-up versions of their characters’ onscreen looks. This came to be known as Method Dressing, a term first coined by the Vogue writer André Wheeler to describe movie stars who dress to match whatever project they are currently hawking. The trend began as a trickle—Halle Bailey showing up in seafoam gowns during the press run for “The Little Mermaid,” say—but it reached an apotheosis in the summer of 2023, also known as the summer of “Barbie” mania.
On July 12, 2023, Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” held a glamorous London première; the following day, Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” did the same. The day after that, SAG-AFTRA, the union representing most screen actors, went on strike over issues relating to fair compensation and the growing use of artificial intelligence, bringing all film and television promotional campaigns to a standstill. A week later, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” both had huge openings: “Barbie” pulled in $70.5 million on its first day in theatres, making it the biggest opening of the year, and “Oppenheimer” did thirty-three million dollars. Together, the two films, which came to be known collectively as “Barbenheimer,” brought in nearly two hundred and fifty million dollars worldwide in one weekend. The bulk of the marketing push for both movies happened well before the strike, meaning that their success was relatively unaffected by stars being pulled from the promo circuit. “Oppenheimer” had a comparatively standard press run, but it benefitted mightily from its proximity to “Barbie,” which had one of the most aggressively bonkers publicity campaigns in recent memory. Warner Bros. spent a reported hundred and fifty million dollars to market Gerwig’s film—exceeding the amount they’d spent on the movie itself—and Mattel launched more than a hundred brand collaborations, from a fuchsia-colored Xbox to bubblegum-hued Crocs.
But perhaps the most influential “Barbie” marketer was the film’s star, Margot Robbie, who, along with her stylist, Andrew Mukamal, crafted an immersive, months-long red-carpet offensive that blurred the lines between character and actress to the point where she began to resemble a Mattel product herself. That summer, she wore a polka-dotted minidress to mimic 2015’s Pink & Fabulous Barbie, a black-and-white Hervé Léger bandage dress in homage to the first Barbie’s striped swimsuit, and a hot pink Versace power suit as a reference to 1985’s Day-to-Night Barbie. Sometimes these looks were pulled from current collections, but several were created specifically for the press blitz, such as the custom, black-sequinned strapless Schiaparelli trumpet gown, with matching opera gloves, that she wore to the L.A. première, created by the designer Daniel Roseberry as an exact replica of a dress worn by a nineteen-sixties lounge-singer version of Barbie. It was a pleasing exercise in nostalgic kitsch, but it also felt somewhat uncanny to watch a movie star sublimate her own aesthetics to that of a giant corporation. She seemed to be having fun, but, at the end of the day, it was clear that she was doing a job. As a result, the entire “Barbie” press tour had a kind of “I will sell this house today” determination that seemed less celebratory than baldly capitalistic. While most actresses in big summer blockbusters are expected to promote them, never before had the effort been so transparent to the public. And what’s more—it worked, strike be damned. “Barbie” made more than $1.4 billion, making it the highest-grossing film of the year, and the most lucrative Warner Bros. effort of all time.
The “Barbie” summer shifted something, fashion-wise, in Hollywood. Method Dressing became the de-facto tactic for stars rolling out a big release, and for the stylists who dress them. Look around, and you’ll see it everywhere: Jenna Ortega in goth-y getups referencing her role on “Wednesday”; Blake Lively dressing (a bit discordantly) in bright maximalist florals to promote “It Ends with Us,” a film about a flower-shop owner in an abusive marriage; Austin Butler vrooming into a press conference for “The Bikeriders” in a vintage motorcycle jacket and a Harley-Davidson tee. Some of these vertical integrations have been more successful than others. Last winter, when Timothée Chalamet was vying for an Oscar for his starring role as a competitive Ping-Pong player in “Marty Supreme,” he turned up at the première in a head-to-toe leather suit by Chrome Hearts in the Doritos-orange hue that his film avatar uses to brand his trademark Ping-Pong balls. (Chalamet’s girlfriend, Kylie Jenner, wore a matching dress in the same nacho-cheese shade.) The effect was, over all, pretty goofy—and seemed to underscore Chalamet’s unapologetic eagerness to put himself in the awards conversation. The same air of trying a bit too hard surrounded Robbie’s latest film campaign, for “Wuthering Heights,” in which Mukamal put her in over-the-top Victorian-inspired gowns, festooned with drooping lace, braids of human hair, and bordello-esque corsetry, which had a whiff of costume-party cringe.
But Method Dressing, as an idea, doesn’t necessarily need to be tasteful. It needs to be remarkable, which is to say, it must get people chattering—it is a marketing maneuver, after all. Hollywood studios, despite some bounce back after the dual hits of the pandemic and the strike year, are still struggling to get people into theatres. Its stars, as dedicated employees of the machine, are all too willing to do whatever it takes to help. Most of what they do to support their film projects—scarfing wings on “Hot Ones” or chips on “Chicken Shop Date,” playing with puppies for BuzzFeed, confessing their sins and private proclivities on every podcast under the sun—can come across as canned and effortful, and the press tour, with its sartorial demands, is no exception. Which brings me to the red-carpet rollout for Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey.” For some reason, it has felt like a different sort of Method Dressing exercise, one that seems remarkably joyful and even, at moments, gleefully spontaneous, despite being as thoroughly planned out as any other major marketing swing. Everyone looks glowing and glamorous, despite sticking generally to a dutiful antiquities theme. What’s going on here?
Perhaps the answer is as simple as Law Roach, the maverick stylist who prefers to be known as an “image architect,” and who has worked with the actress Zendaya, who plays the goddess Athena in Nolan’s film, since 2011. Roach, whom my colleague Jennifer Wilson profiled for this magazine in 2024, is perhaps the most sophisticated practitioner of Method Dressing working today. (As Maison Schiaparelli’s Roseberry told Wilson, there are many imitators doing less successful themed styling, or what he calls “Diet Roach.”) Roach’s strategy, when it comes to dressing Zendaya for a film campaign, tends to be quite literal—he put her in Loewe pumps adorned with actual tennis balls during the “Challengers” press tour—but also deeply attuned to the world of high fashion. He is a scholar of archival couture, known to keep decades of past runway looks in his head and to pull out just the right thing to evoke the mood of a film without leaning into explicit caricature. In February of 2024, he put Zendaya in a vintage Mugler “Gynoid” robot suit for a “Dune: Part Two” première, a gasp-inducing piece that made her look like a gamine android rather than a Comic-Con attendee. For the same film, he also worked with designer Olivier Rousteing, of Balmain, to create a skintight, sand-colored leather dress that took more than two years to come to fruition. Despite the long gestational period, the look felt fresh and full of élan. It could be the way Zendaya wears clothes—confidently and yet casually, as if a couture gown were a pair of beloved, well-worn jeans—but it also has something to do with the intention to showcase high fashion on a grand scale, rather than to merely plug a film.
Zendaya’s looks for “The Odyssey” press run have been nearly pitch-perfect, trading in goddesslike codes, such as Grecian draping and lots of cream and gold, while also not feeling so on-the-nose as to be off-putting. Some highlights include an archival ivory Givenchy minidress by McQueen, with giant, sail-like sleeves and a gold-filigree mask by Philip Treacy; a billowy white custom Jacquemus sheath paired with a matching head scarf and three-thousand-year-old-hammered-disc-shaped earrings; and a pleated Alberta Ferretti sundress with knee-high gladiator sandals. But the two looks that stand out the most were dresses that Roach pulled straight from the couture shows in Paris—rarefied, one-of-a-kind gowns that few people ever get to see out in the world, let alone on an A-list celebrity. For the film’s world première in London, Zendaya wore a Schiaparelli look, taken from the runway mere hours after the house’s Paris show, whose molded silicone corset was made to look like a marble bust. For one of the film’s New York openings, Zendaya turned up in a breathtaking ensemble from the avant-garde French collective Matières Fécales—a white gown with a twisted, molded bodice and long train, paired with an enormous pair of feathered angel wings—that received a rapturous reception on social media. (Many were quick to note that, in the wake of her marriage to her “Odyssey” and “Spider-Man” co-star Tom Holland, she radiated a bridal glow.) On someone else, perhaps, the effect may have been too much—angelic cosplay can easily veer toward Victoria’s Secret—but there was an ethereal lightness to the way that Zendaya carried herself that made her seem almost poised for flight. For Roach, every one of Zendaya’s press campaigns has become a kind of Trojan horse: a chance for people to experience and appraise luxury fashion, which, much like Hollywood, is struggling to find meaningful traction among the general public these days.
It’s not only Zendaya who made Method Dressing seem particularly buoyant during this campaign. Anne Hathaway, who stars as Penelope, dazzled in a series of regal looks pulled for her by her stylist Erin Walsh, including a diaphanous Dior dress in a shocking periwinkle color; the latter subtly referenced the jewel tones Hathaway wears throughout the film, as a woman who refuses to grieve for her missing husband, fervently believing he will return. Lupita Nyong’o, who plays Helen of Troy, has appropriately conjured “the most beautiful woman in the world” through a series of shimmering metallic gowns, such as a silver Christian Cowan sheath that floated down like gossamer chain mail. Charlize Theron, who takes on the role of the temptress nymph Calypso, has leaned toward the seductive, wearing Tom Ford short-shorts on one carpet and a black Givenchy dress with a thigh-high slit on another.
If the male stars of the film (Matt Damon, Holland, Robert Pattinson) stuck to a series of black tuxes and brown suits, the women of “The Odyssey” have seemed to fully delight in this press run, taking an exquisite kind of pleasure in what feels more like a victory parade than a publicity obligation. They may simply be relieved to be in a film that is a pre-baked blockbuster; “The Odyssey” is set to make more than a hundred million dollars in its opening weekend. Perhaps they are aware that as Hollywood studios become more imperilled by the day, it’s indie films like “Obsession” and “Backrooms” that are raking in much of the profit and attention, with no major red carpets in sight. Or maybe they realize that they might be the last generation of mega-stars who can sell a feature by pure force of glamour. Whatever the reason, they seem to be luxuriating in this privilege like the gods, while the rest of us sweat, down here on earth, in a fire-smoke haze, trying not to eat parasite-laced lettuce. But even these screen deities, so far removed from the rest of us, are ultimately tied to mere mortal concerns: no matter how sparkly and sublime the clothes, they are there to sell you something, be it a fantasy or a film ticket. ♦