Just when you thought you’d had enough of method dressing on the red carpet, it seems that Anya Taylor-Joy has taken up the baton from Zendaya (whose tennis-themed Challengers looks have been inescapable over the past month) on the Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga press tour.
For the film’s Australia premiere in Sydney, the actor was in full warrior mode in a metallic chain-linked minidress, featuring dozens of individual spears splaying out from the sides, from Paco Rabanne’s spring 1996 couture collection. She finished the archival look with a matching spiked headpiece, which originally accompanied the dress down the runway.
While we’ve seen a surge in archival recreations on the red carpet, Taylor-Joy’s look is true vintage: a one-of-a-kind couture piece that was assembled by Paco Rabanne himself in his Paris atelier at the time. Indeed, it wouldn’t be out of place in The Costume Institute’s Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion exhibition, which is dedicated to rare pieces of fashion history that are often too fragile to be worn again.
It’s not the first time that the actor has worn vintage on the red carpet, with the star wearing a beaded Bob Mackie dress for the LA premiere of Emma back in 2020. Will we see her sporting another archival number at the Met Gala on Monday? Only (the garden of) time will tell.