The red carpet standouts of 2024 exuded personal style while dressing the part.
The best-dressed celebrities didn’t just dress up. They delivered carefully curated looks that combined capital-F fashion with pure fun — from custom creations to archival gems to thematic ensembles tied to blockbuster films.
Stars and their stylists increasingly used the carpet for storytelling and crafting sartorial narratives that sparked conversations beyond, “Who are you wearing?”
Red carpet-centric chatter reached an all-time high, thanks in no small part to the release of Wicked. The cast embarked on a worldwide press tour that saw the film’s leading ladies, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, embracing the magic of method dressing at every stop, from New York to London to Australia.
To build the Wicked fashion fantasy (and fanbase), designers — including Louis Vuitton, Vivienne Westwood and Thom Browne — created looks that captured the essence of Grande and Evivo’s on-screen characters, Glinda and Elphaba.
Archival looks with meaning behind them was another way celebrities made headlines. Case in point: Sydney Sweeney, who hit the Oscars afterparties in the legendary Marc Bouwer gown Angelina Jolie wore to the Academy Awards in 2004.
The homage took social media by storm. Bouwer, 65, celebrated the 20-year anniversary via Instagram, sharing images of Sweeney, 27, next to a photo of Jolie, 49. Sweeney responded with a shoutout underscoring the rare archival dress’s allure: “Thank you @marcbouwer for pulling this iconic dress out of the vault for me. It was an honor to wear a piece of history.”
To that end we rounded up 10 looks from last year that will go down in red carpet history.