A new era of method dressing hits Hollywood and beyond

Dune star Zendaya — with the help of her prolific stylist Law Roach — is fast becoming a notable fashion icon thanks to “How she’s perfected the art of method dressing,” according to an article from BBC culture reporter Annabel Rackham.

Writing on the latest Hollywood fashion trend, Rackham notes how the actress’ most recent looks extended the tennis theme of her latest film Challengers onto the red carpet. This is not new for Zendaya. She started matching her red carpet fashion to her film roles as far back as 2017 while promoting The Greatest Showman, in which she played circus performer Anne Wheeler. 

For the recent Denis Villeneuve blockbuster Dune: Part Two, Zendaya went full cyborg in a silver, vintage Mugler robot suit from the brand’s winter 1995 “Cirque d’hiver” 20th anniversary collection. Dune, in which she plays a Fremen warrior, is set in the year 10191. Her sci-fi-coded armour-like suit picks up on these thematic threads, similar to how she has been rocking tennis whites while promoting her next movie, Challengers. Here, she plays Tashi Duncan, a former tennis prodigy-turned-coach. 

The highlight of her sporty-chic fashion on the press tour has to be the shimmering custom Loewe dress with a deep V-neck and pleated miniskirt, with a surreal pair of white heels with tennis balls at the heels. 

Having worked together for a little more than a decade, Zendaya and Roach have been quite intentional about their red-carpet choices. Speaking to Alice Newbold, the acclaimed stylist thanked the British Vogue fashion editor for recognising the two of them as the pioneers of the trend’s current era, precisely because they have been at it for years. Some are already typically attributing the trend’s popularity to the likes of Margot Robbie and others.

Feels novel

This is important to note considering how often the retelling of history overlooks the contributions of black people. We’ve seen Robbie building on the trend during promotion season for 2023’s Barbie; we’ve seen Hailey Bailey becoming Ariel (IRL) while promoting The Little Mermaid; and Zoe Kravitz often seen in sleek leather after playing Catwoman in The Batman.

Method dressing is a trend with legs because it is playful and makes fashion feel like fashion again — fun. It’s creative and feels novel every time. That it isn’t easy to pull off is probably what makes it all the more impressive when pulled off as perfectly as Zendaya has. It’s not hard to imagine someone getting it completely wrong that it leaves the realm of fashion, venturing into costume territory.

The trend is also one in a slew of others that emphasise fun while fashion has felt more utilitarian. Examples of this and how the trend has played out in real life include Beyoncé’s Renaissance era and how we saw fans joining in on the themes that ran through the set — metallics, bodysuits, illusion mesh and others. There’s now her Cowboy Carter era, which taps into the Western Cowboy trend worth returning to in a future column. 

Taken together, these trends are a form of sartorial storytelling that has been missing from fashion and culture in general. The impact of social media on this is not lost on me. Storytelling has always been an indispensable part of creative expression but it’s worth noting how social media has made storytelling part and parcel of daily life for more of us than ever before. This means we exist in a culture that is ripe for method dressing to thrive even beyond the confines of Hollywood red carpet events.