To step onto a red carpet in a corseted Vivienne Westwood gown – draped in aqueous folds around the bust and hips like a classical statue – is a rite of passage for British stars en route to Hollywood. This will traditionally coincide with a major album launch or a debut in some big-budget studio film, the dress functioning as a symbolic on-ramp for the English Rose to become Blockbuster Muse.
Consider Dua Lipa, who had just reached new levels of fame with Future Nostalgia, at the 2021 Brits in a saffron-silk minidress and vertiginous ghillie platforms; Jodie Comer posing alongside Austin Butler in a Tyrian purple gown at a London screening of The Bikeriders last month; and Daisy Edgar-Jones at the premiere of the Warner Bros and Universal Pictures-distributed Twisters in a silk chiffon dress with black and chestnut-brown draping. (To be photographed in custom Vivienne Westwood is to come of age.)
Styled by Dani Michelle – who is also the invisible hand behind Rosie-Huntington Whiteley and Hailey Bieber and Kendall Jenner’s wardrobes – Daisy Edgar-Jones wore that Vivienne Westwood gown with a smattering of Cartier’s Grain de Cafe jewels.
At one point, the actress tossed the diaphanous train of her “twisted” chiffon dress into the Leicester Square winds – as if to summon the force of the tornado that backdrops the film itself – and the awkward wallflower of Normal People’s Marianne Sheridan came into bloom.
This post originally appeared in British Vogue.
