Earlier this week, British Vogue’s Alice Newbold published an article titled “Let Dakota Johnson’s Webbed Naked Gown End The Method-Dressing Game,” in reference to the sheer number of arachnid-inspired looks that Johnson and her stylist Kate Young have been pulling for the Madame Web press tour. And it seemed to work: yesterday evening, the actor wore a Tom Ford maxi dress (which was in no way netted or chandeliered) to the film’s premiere in Mexico City. She looked like Dakota Johnson the actor as opposed to Dakota Johnson the actor starring in a film about spiders.
Of course, Johnson isn’t the first person to make self-referential statements on the red carpet. That would be Margot Robbie, who has spent the past 12 months in varying shades of Barbie-pink. See also: Maisie Williams–who is starring as Catherine Dior in Apple TV+’s period drama The New Look, which retraces the rivalries between Christian Dior and Gabrielle Chanel–in all her nip-waisted odes to the 1940s. Though fun, the method-dressing trend is a hard thing to pull off without it feeling, well, a little obvious. There is little reason for clothing to also take on the responsibilities of a film studio’s marketing department. “It’s impossible to know what people look like anymore!” as Newbold wrote.
Method dressing should, at least, converge with an actor’s personal style. It helps, then, that Florence Pugh has always dressed as if she were some kind of tough-minded empress. (She plays Princess Irulan in Dune: Part Two alongside Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet.) Consider the feathered headpiece she wore to the 2023 Met Gala, or these bone-crushing platform wedges, for example.
And so, for tonight’s Dune: Part Two premiere at Leicester Square, she stepped onto sand dunes installed outside the Odeon cineplex in a long-trained, hooded dress embroidered with chocolate-brown sequins that, yes, felt Arrakis-appropriate, but also like it had been sourced from an atelier rather than a Warner Bros lot. In fact, creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli personally designed the look for Pugh. A suitably celestial look for the fictional daughter of an intergalactic emperor, with one foot very much in the real (fashion) world.