Social media exploded yesterday afternoon when Barbie stars Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie stepped out on a CinemaCon red carpet making an unmissable reference to their characters, which means this is not the time for us to get all huffy about theme-dressing on the red carpet, like we usually do. Allow us to explain. But first, pretty blondes in pink.
Ryan Gosling in Acne Studios
Margot Robbie in Prada
Gosling looks pretty hot in those jeans and boots, and of course that t-shirt is a brilliant tribute to the film’s director (and possibly the hottest t-shirt of summer 2023). We don’t love his perm. Her look is excessively twee and we would normally be railing against any rick-rack sighting on a red carpet, but this is, of course, entirely appropriate for what she’s trying to do. Our only true critique is that the pink of the shoes slightly clashes with the outfit. As for our objections to theme-dressing, we’ll start by defining it. It’s a term we use when an actor or actress dresses for the red carpet in something fairly close to a costume from the film they’re promoting. More broadly, it can be used to describe when an actor or actress is dressing in some sort of hard-to-miss thematic callback to the film, like when Zendaya wore spider- or web-themed looks to promote Spider-Man: No Way Home. From our perspective, which is to say a more style-oriented one, we’ve never loved this trend because it has a tendency to lapse into cosplay, which is a form of expression, craft, and technical skill we respect, but it’s not fashion. As people who have written about both extensively, fashion is fashion and costume is costume. They have different goals, modes, and meanings behind them. It’s not that they can never cross over, and we’re certainly not suggesting that one is more valuable or worthy than the other, but the people who put red carpet looks together aren’t costume designers, which is why they can often feel fairly unstylish if not a bit pedestrian or obvious.
HOWEVER…
There are certain characters on the iconic scale that practically require this sort of approach, especially if the character has an aesthetic that’s extremely easy to sum up and recreate. A lot of superhero characters tend to fall into this category, like when Zoe Kravitz was getting her Catwoman on or Gal Gadot was sticking to a Wonder Woman-inspired color story for their respective promotional obligations. We would be completely out of line to suggest that these two shouldn’t be dressing exactly like this for this tour. We honestly can’t wait to see what they do for the big red carpet appearances to come. We suspect they won’t stay in character for the entirety of their promotional obligations, but a Barbie film publicity tour demands miles of pink textiles and tons of pink accessories from everyone involved. We don’t love theme-dressing as a red carpet trend, but we can’t deny that there are times in this IP-dominant cinema age where it’s entirely appropriate.
[Photo Credit: Eric Charbonneau/Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures – Video Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures/YouTube]
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