CNN
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Every time a celebrity poses on the red carpet, countless cameras flash, immortalizing that outfit forever and preserving the hundreds or even thousands of hours they spent creating it.
Sunday night’s Golden Globe Awards were no exception, with Zendaya channeling old Hollywood glamor in a saffron-hued Louis Vuitton gown, Angelina Jolie in a dazzling crystal chain McQueen dress, and Tilda Swinton She wore a Chanel jacket with custom embroidery.
Online, red carpet outfits like this have a long life as they are shared on social media and analyzed by influencers and journalists alike. However, the actual fate of the garment itself is less known. What happens to them after their moment of fame? Where do they go and when will they appear again?
The afterlife of a costume can take many different forms: some are stored in warehouses, some are displayed at exhibitions, some go on the open market and are auctioned off, and some are purchased by the celebrities who wear them. Some do. In some cases, people may not even survive the night.
Over the past 20 years, the outfits worn by celebrities at red carpet events have gained increasing attention and, as a result, importance, said Lucy Bishop, handbag and fashion expert at auction house Sotheby’s.
She cites the Dior chartreuse-embroidered dress designed by John Galliano and worn by Nicole Kidman to the 1997 Oscars as one of the earliest turning points that “changed the trajectory of red carpet dressing.” It marked the beginning of fashion houses becoming “open partners.” It’s like being a celebrity and formally dressing them for the red carpet. ”
“Before, it wasn’t such a formal partnership,” she told CNN.
We’re in an era where entire teams of stylists and designers are involved in creating and realizing red carpet looks, especially at the most high-profile events like the Met Gala or the Oscars. So there’s much more incentive to save the huge amount of work required to create these looks.
“The days when gowns could be put away for years, forgotten, and then rediscovered are sadly long gone,” Bishop added. “Now, when you wear a gown on a red carpet, there’s usually a plan in place for where that gown will end up.”
In most cases, fashion houses are responsible for this planning, as they often own red carpet outfits designed by them, but some celebrities buy specific dresses for themselves. .
Kim Kardashian told Vogue magazine in May that she had “saved” all of the outfits she wore to the Met Gala in her wardrobe. Except for the iconic Marilyn Monroe dress she wore two years ago, before returning it to Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, where she had lent it. She is for the event. Similarly, Zendaya bought the black taffeta 1996 Givenchy by Galliano dress she wore to last year’s Met Gala, Zendaya’s stylist said in an interview.
Sarah Scaturro, chief conservator at the Cleveland Museum of Art, said the first thing red carpet costumes go through after an event is a cleaning process. The person wearing that clothing may be wearing body lotions, oils, perfumes, and makeup, and over time, these substances and dirt can actually oxidize, even if it’s not immediately obvious. “The fabric, and maybe even the texture, starts to change,” she told CNN.
Scaturro added that the process usually involves dry cleaning, but if all else is not possible, it can also include wet cleaning or simply vacuuming or brushing the garment. .
Once a garment is cleaned, it is most often stored in a specialized storage facility, such as a fashion house’s archive or a private storage facility like that of Julie Ann Kraus, founder of archival storage studio Wardrobe.
The costumes will remain here for many years, meticulously maintained and preserved, only remaining if they are selected for exhibition or worn again. This is an increasingly common practice due to the rise of vintage fashion on the red carpet.
With around 100,000 items in storage, Klaus and her team carefully consider the best storage methods, from low light levels and controlled temperature and humidity levels to how clothing is stored. .
“It’s really a case-by-case as to how each specific item is installed or stored,” she said. “So some things are hanging, some things are in boxes, and some things have to be attached. So, like a dress form, you have to put them on. Because these Because the thing is designed to be worn. It’s not really designed to be hung or laid flat.”
Some people leave temporarily after being selected for an exhibition, as was the case with the Crown to Couture exhibition at Kensington Palace in the UK last year.
The Marilyn Monroe-inspired tulle Oscar de la Renta dress worn by Billie Eilish at the 2021 Met Gala and worn by Billy Porter while carried in velvet to the 2019 event Several iconic looks appeared, including the eye-catching “Sun God” costume. Rihanna’s voluminous 2021 Balenciaga black coat dress and Beyoncé’s shimmering gold Peter Dundas dress worn at the 2017 Grammy Awards.
In this way, these costumes became like works of art, their craftsmanship preserved and admired from afar, no longer really clothes but exhibits to be studied by future historians. It can also be used as a craft item.
Assembling costumes for such exhibitions is a difficult task in itself. Mr. Kraus recalled a recent time when he helped a client transport costumes for a tour. The costume was “three-dimensional and gigantic, but made of very delicate stretch tulle with fine beading and heavy crystals.”
“I said, ‘I can’t put this in a box…'” she said. “We have to create custom mounts to be able to fly internationally stably, and we have to build crates around them. When you look at these crates, they are so large that they are sometimes used as dresses. It can grow up to 7 feet tall.”
Bishop says that since the 1990s, before red carpet dressing became so important to fashion houses, gowns were typically kept by the wearer and sometimes given away or sold on the open market. It was said that it was on target.
Most famously, Elizabeth Taylor gave up the Dior dress she wore to collect her Oscar, and instead of the dress remaining in the Dior archives, the suit belonged to her friend and former employee Anne Sanz. It was discovered stuffed inside a case. It later sold at auction for $200,000, according to Kelly Taylor Auctions.
Even today, gowns can still occasionally be found on the open market, sometimes through unconventional routes.
After the 2019 Golden Globe Awards, Lady Gaga allegedly left her billowing periwinkle dress in her hotel room, where it was later picked up by a housekeeper and delivered to the Lost and Found office at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. .
The Valentino haute couture dress, which the hotel said was “given to me as a gift” by the hotel’s housekeeper, spent months there before being put up for auction, but it’s unclear if the sale ever materialized. (CNN has reached out to Nate D. Sanders Auctions, which handled the sale, and Valentino for comment.)
Then there are some clothes that won’t last even one night. For her entrance to last year’s Met Gala, singer Tyra wore a custom Balmain dress. The dress mixed three colors of sand and microcrystal studs for depth, and it proved to be one of the most striking and innovative looks of the night.
But later that night, after a red carpet event, designer Olivier Rousteing cut off her long skirt with scissors, allowing Tyra to walk up the museum’s stairs, which previously required four men. Like the sands of time it represents, the dress passed by.
