Early Awards Season Fashion Review and Predictions

The Golden Globes marks the start of the awards season for the American populous, and with awards season comes red carpets. Taking a look at the fashion of the Golden Globes, I wanted to review what outfits stood out and predict which trends might continue onto the red carpets to follow. 

There were lots of Art Deco motifs, a movement in the decorative arts and architecture that originated in the 1920s and 1930s, such as scallops, fringe, pinstripes, beading, flapper-shaped “boxy” dresses, and menswear-inspired looks. Many stars opted to embellish modern silhouettes or fabrics with a flapper-esque flair for a mashup of the fashion of both the 20s and 30s decades. Riley Keough, Jennifer Aniston, and Keri Russell portrayed this combination of modern and 1920s fashion perfectly. Additionally, “classic” old Hollywood silhouettes that paid homage to Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, and Doris Day were popular.  This is unsurprising due to the rise in popularity of retro and vintage-inspired clothing and aesthetics in recent years. Old Hollywood glamour is becoming more and more visible on the red carpet. Angela Bassett, Camilla Marone, and Hailee Steinfeld all epitomized this trend of revitalized retro. 

For the men’s looks, although the men are starting to explore more color, patterns, and embellishments, they mostly stick to traditional tuxedo shapes. Jewelry like brooches have started to pop up as a common occurrence on the red carpet. Reds, blues, whites, and navies were popular color choices this year. I am excited that more people are choosing to push the boundaries of black and white tuxes and adding personalized flair to their outfits like Jelani Alladin, Barry Keoghan, Scot Evans, and Teo Yoo. This is a new direction in comparison to the decades-old trend of men wearing almost the same thing on every red carpet. I hope that this continues as we get farther into the awards season. 

The makeup focused on adding depth and dimension to the eyes and generally veered towards a more natural and defined makeup in comparison to glamorous and adventurous. This new emphasis on the eyes marks the end of the 2010’s focus on lips. I would describe most lip makeup at the Golden Globes this year as a “your lips but better” type of look. There were lots of lipliner and sheer tinted glosses that enhanced the lips but did not emphasize them. This is unusual because winter generally means a shift towards deeper, richer colors when it comes to lips. Bold shades of merlot, plum, red, mauve, berry, and lipsticks instead of glosses are popular. Additionally, the Golden Globes are a formal event that usually entails bolder makeup. However, most looks were subtle, wearable, everyday looks. Red carpet glamour is returning to the fashion aspect of awards season, but makeup is seemingly not following this trend. 

I predict a mix of vintage silhouettes with modern/futuristic embellishments like the outfits on Hunter Schafer, Gillian Anderson, and Natasha Lyonne will continue into the rest of the season. I believe that the leaders of this next frontier in fashion will be designers who are known for their unique and adventurous takes on fashion like Schiaparelli, Alexander McQueen, Loewe, and Iris Van Herpen. I think this will be an especially prominent theme this year because of the topic of this year's Met Gala “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.” We will most likely continue the theme of makeup that is used to define and enhance natural features, but we may see more experimentation when it comes to eye looks. I also predict that we will see a lot of neutral colors and/or metallics like cream, silver, gold, white, tans, black, and navy instead of vibrant outfits. If we do see color, it most likely will be jewel-toned or muted colors. I look forward to checking in again after the awards season ends and seeing whether my predictions fell in line with this year's fashion trends.  

By Leah Mederios