This Week: The Golden Globes Kick Off Red Carpet Season

The luxury industry is in a deep funk, with brands battling a backlash to soaring prices and a perceived slip in quality. Marketing budgets face the axe, as do creative directors and CEOs whose jobs looked secure just months ago. It’s an unpleasant backdrop as the Golden Globes kick off awards season, the period from January to March that places a major spotlight on luxury fashion.

Ironically, the slump may also be the reason the red carpet is more entertaining than usual; Brands with something to prove can put on a good show, if last year is anything to go by:

• Calvin Klein dressed Jeremy Allen White in a custom suit for the Golden Globes, days after splashing him across the internet in CK boxer briefs. A few months later, the brand would hire Veronica Leoni as creative director, and announce a return to the runway scheduled for next month.
• Gucci and Versace both had a miserable 2024, with sales in sharp decline. The red carpet was a bright spot for both however; Launchmetrics found the brands ranked fourth and fifth, respectively, in terms of social media buzz off the awards show circuit. Love or hate the shimmering green Gucci dress Taylor Swift wore to the Golden Globes, but at least people were paying attention.
• Gap hired Zac Posen to inject some much-needed magic back into the brand, and that’s come mainly through a series of red carpet looks, including a denim dress Da’vine Joy Randolph wore to the Met Gala, and a knit maxi dress worn by Demi Moore to an event last month. Those moments have helped insert Gap into the cultural conversation in a way we haven’t seen in years.
• Jonathan Anderson scored moment after moment for Loewe, helping to cement the LVMH-owned brand’s place among luxury’s heavy hitters, and fuelling rumours around the designer’s next act.

What can we expect at the Golden Globes on Sunday? Thanks to its status as the first big event of the year, the show remains in the big four of red carpet events, along with the Grammys in February, the Oscars in March and the Met Gala in May. It’s also known as the most “fun” of the major film awards, which can lead to slightly more adventurous outfits, too.

• Theme dressing was big in 2024, including Zendaya’s Loewe-designed “Challengers” press tour looks and ubiquitous pink and green at various “Wicked” events (the ketchup and mustard colouring at the “Deadpool & Wolverine” premiere was a bridge too far for some). All three movies are nominated for Golden Globes (“Deadpool & Wolverine” in the populist “Box Office Achievement” category), so we’ll see if the trend continues, or if it was more of an aftershock of “Barbie”-mania.
• The last few months of 2024 saw new creative directors appointed at Celine, Givenchy, Tom Ford and others. Most of these designers haven’t shown a collection yet, though that doesn’t preclude their creating custom red carpet looks, whether on Sunday or later in the season. We should see plenty of Alessandro Michele’s Valentino, however.
• The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has a history of nominating glamorous stars its members want to see at the show, regardless of whether their movies were any good. This year’s nominees include red carpet heavy hitters Zendaya, Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Timothée Chalamet and Colman Domingo, mostly in quality projects. Among newcomers, Anora’s Mikey Madison is the one to watch; working with stylist Jamie Mizrahi, she’s already gotten plenty of coverage for red carpet looks from Prada and Schiaparelli, and even grabbed headlines twice in one day for walking her dog in a Loewe shirtdress and a Mugler midi dress.
• Finally, expect more mainstream brand glow ups. It worked for Calvin Klein and Gap, so other mall retailers should give the red carpet playbook a try. H&M seems like as good a candidate as any, given it’s embarking on a Gap-style image rebrand, is no stranger to high fashion collaborations and dressed a posse of celebs at last year’s Met Gala.

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