For the last nine months, Demi Moore has been in nonstop promotion mode for her film The Substance, gracing red carpets from the Cannes Film Festival leading up to the 2025 Oscars. This Sunday’s ceremony will not only conclude Moore’s awards season victory lap, but an impressive fashion campaign that managed to nod to the film without going overboard.
In an era of rampant method dressing, Moore and her longtime stylist Brad Goreski ran a masterclass in subtlety. Yes, there were homages aplenty, but they did not preclude anyone who hadn’t seen the film from enjoying the fashion. It helps, in part, that Goreski wasn’t able to see the film before they kicked off their tour in Cannes last May. “I hadn’t seen the movie either, so I was really just going off of what she was kind of telling me,” Goreski says. But he knew that for Moore’s first trip to Cannes since 1997—and her first time premiering a film there—the looks needed to offer high glamour while still referencing the film. “She said, ‘I would really like to make the dressing kind of purposeful and tell somewhat of a story,’” he says.
Moore’s kickoff at Cannes was filled with references to a film that nobody had seen yet—something that became clearer as the tour went on. “Twitter is now going like, Oh, this is what they’ve been doing for nine months,” he laughs. “Yeah, we’ve put some serious thought behind these looks.” For her first appearance on the Croisette, Moore wore a custom strapless red beaded dress from Armani Privé with diamond and ruby jewelry from Chopard, which Goreski notes is a reference to the film’s gore. The pair have turned to red multiple times over the course of the last nine months, from the dramatic red mosaic Oscar de la Renta dress she wore to the Los Angeles premiere to the cool Proenza Schouler she sported at a Toronto International Film Festival party.
Cannes served as a launchpad for another recurring motif in their press looks: body modification. The first example was a teal sequined Balenciaga dress with an amplified hip. “Another one of the themes that we’ve been leaning into is this idea of exaggeration. The Balenciaga had an exaggerated hip on it, but it was still a classic ballgown shape,” he says. “Our nod to the changing of the body and the deforming of the body and The Substance is having something that’s like a little off, but not grotesque in a way. Just very subtle,” Goreski explains. The Schiaparelli couture dress Moore wore for the film’s Cannes premiere was a prime example. The strapless champagne mermaid gown was classic Old Hollywood glamour, but its exaggerated blade-like protrusion from the bust served as a reminder to the body horror.
On the other side of the coin, the two have also embraced corsetry as a sartorial form of body modification. “We’ve also been making extreme shapes by making the waist really, really small,” he says. Perhaps the most apparent look—also custom Schiaparelli—was Moore’s Critics Choice look: a navy blue strapless number with a lace-up back that mirrored the sewn-up spine on the film’s poster. Still, the looks are not always so extreme. Moore has embraced cinched waists, embellished hips, drop waists, and skewed proportions all season long.
While the corseted Schiaparelli was perhaps the most obvious of their looks this season, a few others paid more direct homage to the film. While many of the pieces fulfilled another one of Goreski’s criteria, others fit within the film’s primary color scheme. Though she wore plenty of red and blue, a yellow Oscar de la Renta dress that Moore wore to a Chopard event in Cannes instantly draws to mind her egg yolk colored coat in the film.
Eagle-eyed fans may also have noticed a recent reference in the Dior dress she wore to the DGA Awards. The diaphanous dress, covered in eyes, harkens back to a harrowing moment in the film when her character Elisabeth’s eyeball splits. Dior had approached Goreski about dressing Moore when he asked if she might be able to borrow the spring 2018 couture look from the archives. The house gladly obliged, fashioning custom underpinnings to go along with the look.
For the 2025 Oscars, Moore and Goreski decided to stick to one last tenant of their press tour: a literal nod to Elisabeth Sparkle. “There’s the idea of her character’s name being Elisabeth Sparkle and how we’ve played with that, whether it be with jewelry or movie star glamour. We’ve been trying to maintain this balance of elegant [and] sophisticated, but also with this unexpected twist,” he says. Finishing off The Substance’s run on a high, they turned to Armani Privé, who made the actress a plunging, crystal-encrusted gown with a exaggerated, pleated hip and floor-sweeping train.
“I think people have enjoyed being a part of this process because of Demi and the fact that she’s having such a great moment,” Goreski says. “But also I think people are excited to be a part of the story that has a little bit more behind it than just putting dresses on the red carpet.”
See every look from the 2025 Oscars Red Carpet:
