The red carpet is a place where actors go to be taken seriously as artists. There, you are not just a famous person with a Warner Bros contract, you are a film darling, a thespian, and you are so committed to your craft that you are, in fact, method dressing. Generally this also means people wear long dresses and opera gloves—clothing which clings to the conventions of the beau monde— while they repeat the phrase “Old Hollywood” in fashion interviews, because tradition equals legitimate.
Anne Hathaway—who has played the doomed grisette and has the Best Supporting Actress Oscar to prove it—does not seem to care about any of this. (At least not while she is promoting her new rom-com, The Idea of You, which is based on some 2017 Harry Styles fan-fiction.) “For some reason, we talk about coming-of-age stories as being something that happens to you in the earliest part of your life, and I don’t know about you, but I feel like I keep blooming,” she said at the film’s premiere this weekend. “I don’t want to be pigeonholed and don’t want to be placed in a box of what type of films I have to be making because of my age, gender, and because I won an Oscar. I want to have fun, dammit!”
That is a sentiment that could also be applied to Hathaway’s wardrobe. Last night, she wore a crystal-embellished minidress from Patou’s spring 2024 collection with Aquazzura platforms and a smattering of Bulgari jewels. She looked like she was perhaps celebrating her birthday in a metropolitan cocktail bar, drawing on the sort of sequin-embroidered glamour enjoyed by Amal Clooney: a woman who long ago proved that flirty and feminine clothing need not detract from someone’s professional achievements.