Capsule #82 ft. David Chipakupaku

Hello hello,

Happy Friday 🖤

Today’s issue is all about red carpet referencing — the complaints, plus some points I think are missing from the discourse. I’d also love to hear your thoughts!

Make sure you scroll for a great Hot & Not from David Chipakupaku, and have a wonderful weekend!

Holly x

Red carpet referencing: how are we feeling?

The fashion media world (Vogue, i-D) is weighing in on red carpet referencing or “cosplaying”, though that word doesn’t feel quite right to me. So we’re clear, this isn’t method dressing in line with a fictional character (like Zendaya wearing tennis-adjacent stuff for the Challengers press tour, or Ariana and Cynthia hard committing to pink and green), but when celebs recreate looks previously heralded as iconic on a different star. It’s a way of paying homage to an historic icon, allowing stars to position themselves within a certain lineage of talent, and wink to the audience like I get it. To get us started, some examples:

At this year’s Golden Globes, Kylie Jenner referenced Elizabeth Hurley, and Ayo Edebiri reference Julia Roberts.

For her 25th birthday, Sabrina Carpenter’s look referenced How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days. At the 2024 VMAs, she referenced Madonna at the 1991 Oscars.

Okay this is actually a method dressing x referencing crossover, but for the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice press tour last year, Jenna Ortega referenced Wynona Ryder.

And probably the most-referenced icon of all time: Princess Diana. Having a Diana moment is pretty much a rite of passage for many stars.

We aren’t short of examples, but recent instances seem to have garnered more negative sentiment than positive. In the comments of this Vogue post, you can get a feel for the swell of critique around reference dressing, particularly off the back of the Golden Globes, and as we look ahead to the rest of awards season.

The biggest complaint is that we’re not generating any new ideas — the same concerns we hear around music, TV, film, and pretty much all art forms these days. For i-D, Ariel LeBeau asks: “Hollywood execs want us to settle for reboot after reboot on screen, do we really have to settle for reboots on the red carpet too?”. Frustration with a lack of originality is something most of us can get behind. Budget for dozens of extra Marvel films but very little for new talent is pretty bleak. But I don’t think reference dressing - a small proportion of all sartorial output we consume - is the core problem.

Think about it like this: during awards season, someone like Ayo Edebiri or Zendaya will attend a bunch of events (Golden Globes, Oscars, BAFTAs, SAG Awards, plus all their after parties), and that’s on top of the press tour events for their own films. We’re looking at ~20 key red carpet moments, and many more throughout the year. The proportion of that space dedicated to referenced looks is pretty minimal.

The next thing we need to consider is what actually does drive innovation within fashion. Throughout history, we’ve seen clothing progress in response to three different areas:

1. Social change — shifting politics, values, lifestyle, and income of (mostly) women, who dress according to the times. Think: hemlines getting shorter, the introduction of suits for women, and recession dressing

2. Technological advancement — the availability of new materials, styles, and turnaround times as a result of emerging technology

3. Investment in design — Styles from new designers who are given time and resource to create via programmes like the British Fashion Council’s NewGen, which invests in young designers, and counts Alexander McQueen, Jonathan Anderson and Simone Rocha amongst it’s alumni

If we look at today’s fashion landscape through this lens, we might recognise that increased reliance on referencing, or less interesting red carpet style generally, points towards more systemic issues. It’s hard to break through as a new designer — every season smaller brands have to sit out to preserve cash, or close their labels completely (Mara Hoffman, The Vampire’s Wife, Y/Project). In terms of technological advancement, I won’t explain here why “AI fashion” hasn’t got a great appeal right now, but I think you can imagine that. And in terms of social stuff, the biggest influence on fashion recently has been micro-trends informed by social media use (particularly short-form video content). Within this context, you can see why nodding to the past might feel appealing, or even meaningful.

On that “appealing” note, I think it’s also worth remembering that celebrity fashion is the output of career stylists. Choosing these looks and sourcing the garments to execute them is someone’s job - a fun one, but still a job. Reference photos are a stylist’s library, a vital part of producing anything, and I imagine getting to be so on the nose every now and again is a fun way of ticking off one of many looks you need to pull together. Separately, it’s very much a flex to granted access to certain archival pieces, to borrow or to buy.

Creative people use a bank of visual references to produce their work. That means output is rarely entirely new, but continually informed by the visual culture that came before it. That being said, the strongest instances of reference dressing make sense within the context - like Kylie’s assimilation to Elizabeth Hurley and Hugh Grant, situating herself as the Hot Date to a Hot Actor of the moment, less like Blake Lively’s quite random selection of a Versace dress worn by Britney on the press tour for It Ends With Us. One of the best examples I’ve seen recently is Doechii’s performance of ‘Denial Is A River’ for The Late Show. She wears long braids connected to her two dancers, which is a reference to Solange’s 2016 performance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where her dress is connected to two dancers.

The more you dig, the more you see that some of the critique around referencing in fashion at large comes down to who is doing the referencing. That’s fine, of course, nobody has to like everyone. But certain stars get more heat (Sabrina Carpenter, Kylie Jenner), which makes you think that the problem isn’t referencing in and of itself, but how it feels when a star you don’t love aligns themselves with someone you hold dear (offended). Like finding out you like the same band as a person you can’t stand.

When this sort of “they aren’t worthy” critique emerges, as well as deploring the lack of creativity, people also accuse stars of chasing clicks online. This is entirely true. But I see that less as a moral failure and more as a symptom of how the entire industry works. People are constantly subliminally pitching themselves for ambassadorships with luxury brands, and on a more fundamental level, public opinion steers the shape of Hollywood careers. If we “stan” an actress for her looks and crown her with It Girl status, her work increases, as does her ability to secure multiple revenue streams to build a safety net around her career.

A couple more things to add, and then I’d love to hear from you. One is that I also think reference dressing is good PR for vintage fashion at large. Besides a few rare instances, it’s the closest thing we get to stars repeating outfits in the public eye. The next is that, like with a lot of things, we’re easily bored with reference dressing as a trend more broadly. What started out as novel feels saturated after seeing three instances in a week, even though that isn’t so much at all. We crave more and newness at such pace that we write things off really quickly. While I don’t wish for endless recycling - far from it! - I think the bigger things that need to go right for innovation to flourish will require a little patience, and goodwill towards the creatives making it work in the meantime.

And finally…

Fashion and pop culture news you may have missed this week:

• The British Fashion Council (now headed up by Laura Weir) will adopt Copenhagen Fashion Week’s sustainability requirements, meaning brands will have to meet certain standards to be part of the BFC’s NewGen programme at London Fashion Week

• Florence Pugh won’t be doing roles that require her to “abuse” herself emotionally again (looking at you, Midsommar)

• Here’s Kyle Maclachlan’s tribute to David Lynch 🥲

• Bad Bunny did a surprise performance on the NYC subway

• Olivia Rodrigo, Tyler the Creator and Hozier will headline the Gov Ball this year

• It looks like Miley is heading to Broadway!

• Proenza Schouler’s founding designers are stepping down… to head to Loewe?

• FKA twigs is touring the new album

• Gracie Abrams is the new face of Chanel, directed by Sofia Coppola

• See Paloma Elsesser’s lovely home for Architectural Digest

• And finally: Timmy arriving to his premiere in London on a Lime bike. Here is a roundup of the lineage of star cyclists he joins:

This week, David Chipakupaku popped into Capsule to share what’s 🔥hot🔥 and what’s not 🙅‍♀️ …

David is a journalist, presenter, and DJ, originally from the Scottish borders, now living in South London. He starts co-running the Charli xcx and Katie Gavin-approved party Pop Never Dies from February, and is supporting MØ next Thursday at The Lexington. If you also like sci-fi, you can listen to his dulcet tones on The Who Watch, the Doctor Who-themed podcast he co-hosts with the author Beth Axford.

📺 Watching: A Real Pain in the cinema, plus the Kieran Culkin x Colman Domingo interview in full. Also in full Traitors/Claudia Winkleman mode, so I bring you this video about why art is so special to her, and this clip on her personal style. Both worth clicking.

📖 Reading: Ryan Broderick’s take for Garbage Day on why TikTok doesn’t need America, plus two pieces on Babygirl after seeing it last week: first from Amanda Montei, who unpacks the film’s exploration of consent and desire within marriage, and second from Daisy Jones, who argues that the film fell victim to the “all vibes, no meaning” trap. I enjoyed both!

🎧 Listening to: The Florence Pugh episode of Reign with Josh Smith, ‘Bovine Excision’, the new Samia song, and ‘Ankles’, the new Lucy Dacus song and video.

It’s been feeling like January for many of us this week, myself and Luna included, and the search history tells us a lot of people are in the same boat. The data: “chicken soup recipe” searches spiked +350% this week, “meditation apps” is a trending search, as is “lymphatic massage” and “self care reminders”. Hang in tight my loves, January is half finished.

If you’d like to adopt Luna or one of her friends, click here to learn more.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear how you’re finding Capsule - let me know here. And if you have a friend who might like it, do refer them! 🥺

See you next week 💋

In some of the products we recommend, we may earn a small affiliate commission. We only ever recommend things we genuinely like and would buy, and this small revenue driver goes directly towards keeping Capsule going. Thank you for the support. 🫶