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Holding Space for the Wicked Red Carpet Looks

Lusia Austen

Few movies this year have had quite as successful of a press run as Wicked. Like an episode of Fairly Odd Parents, the colors pink and green have been appearing everywhere together, representing the film’s two leading ladies, Elphaba, played by British actress Cynthia Erivo, and Glinda, played by Ariana Grande—Target collaborations, Stanley cups, even Paris’ Arc de Triomphe was lit up in the two characters’ signature colors. Obviously, the lasting popularity of the movie’s source material has contributed to the ease with which its marketing team has conducted its campaign—green, reflecting the Wicked Witch’s signature green skin, and pink, for Billie Burke’s iconic Glinda dress in the original Wizard of Oz film. However, this marketing campaign has extended beyond clever brand deals and light shows to the actresses themselves.

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Over the course of several months of press junkets and red carpet appearances, Erivo and Grande have adhered to their respective character’s dress codes. In order to match Elphaba’s signature witchy look, Erivo opted for sharper looks, which go well with her already experimental style, as well as her gravity and rule-defying character on screen. She has dressed in darker colors, usually sticking to the greens and blacks that make up much of her wardrobe in the movie. In contrast, Grande is styled like a princess in light, flowy pastel dresses and skirts, often with floral accents. Her outfits, which often call to mind classical twentieth century silhouettes, look like they could be worn by Glinda herself. Though these actresses are clearly serving looks on the red carpet (or the Yellow Brick Road), they’re also working to promote their film.

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Left: Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande at the Los Angeles premiere of Wicked (2024).

Right: Erivo and Grande at the London premiere of Wicked.

Photo credit: Getty Images.

Prior to the official start of the Wicked press tour, Erivo and Grande appeared together at events like the 2024 Met Gala and the Opening Ceremony of the Paris Olympics in outfits that referenced their counterparts on the silver screen. It stirred up early anticipation for the movie, even before the first official trailer dropped. This kind of low-profile marketing campaign, called method dressing, has grown increasingly popular over the last few years. Particularly with the outstanding success of Margot Robbie’s press tour for Barbie in the summer of 2023, more and more actors are jumping on the bandwagon.

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Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo at the 2024 Met Gala.

Photo Credit: Getty Images.

Though the Barbie press tour was cut unfortunately short by the SAG-AFTRA strike, Robbie’s thematic outfits still managed to make quite an impression. At every new premiere, she was able to pull off a fresh look that referenced Mattel’s signature doll. Before the movie even hit theaters, she had cemented herself not just as the actress playing Barbie, but the character herself. Method dressing, when it’s successful, has a powerful ability to sell the fiction of a movie as reality. In a day and age when every paparazzi photo is being posted and reposted on dozens of social media sites and seen by millions, it has become an incredibly influential marketing tool. Over the past year alone, actresses like Zendaya and Jenna Ortega have used this method in order to promote their new movies. In Zendaya’s case, at the same time that she was donning preppy tennis whites to attend a premiere of Challengers (2024), she was also collaborating with the sportswear brand On. It becomes a circular way of promoting and selling a certain product, led by the actors themselves.

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A handful of Margot Robbie’s looks from the Barbie Press Tour in 2023. 

Photo credit: the New York Times.

For musical artists like Grande and Erivo, who often lean into certain looks as a way to publicize their own unique image, method dressing is the natural continuation of the work that they have done in the past. For instance, one might recall Grande’s signature high ponytail, and how instrumental that was to cultivating her adult image post-Nickelodeon. Now, when the thing she’s trying to promote is her role as Glinda, there is a blurring of the line between the actress and the character. Erivo was able to achieve something similar, particularly with her distinctive nail art. The actress, who is known for wearing long, elaborately decorated acrylic nails, was able to incorporate that aspect of herself into the character of Elphaba, visually blending her on- and off-screen personas. And, for any audience members that want to achieve the same look, they can shop the OPI x Wicked nail polish collaboration. The Wicked press tour has reached near unprecedented levels of popularity, in part thanks to what some would consider innocuous fashion choices. However, clothes, as we all know, are a powerful tool, especially for two fabulous witches. 

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