Over the weekend, I also spoke with Odessa A’zion about her Oscar weekend looks. A breakout star this season with her turns in Marty Supreme and I Love LA, A’zion also styles herself.
The current setup of the stylist ecosystem, in which stylists like Goldberg or Law Roach nowadays do more than merely pick an outfit, but serve as intermediaries, power brokers, and mediators with brands and designers, is a result of the corporatization of fashion over the course of the past three decades, as conglomerates like LVMH and Kering absorbed most luxury labels.
“The thing that’s changed more than anything is the way brands function with VIP [talent] and stylists,” Kate Young, one of Hollywood’s OG power stylists, told me last month. “It has changed dramatically post-COVID, and I think it’s really changing right now too, with all the new regimes. Every house with a new designer is getting a new VIP team, which means they’re getting a new strategy…. Now, so much is on contract and predetermined. People are really laser-focused on their celebrity placements in a way they didn’t used to be.”
It’s why the red carpet has become a race for not just actors and studios, but also brands and designers. Who gets to dress the Oscar winner, who gets the most best-dressed mentions, the most social coverage, the better press, is more important than ever, to the point where it transcends the actors themselves and becomes a numbers game.
It’s why, I think, A’zion and Taylor represent a budding movement in Hollywood in which we might see more stars move away from the stylist ecosystem as we know it. It’s not that Hollywood will do away with stylists altogether—A’zion told me herself that she’s open to finding one to collaborate with, as long as she doesn’t cede control of her self-image. I think we’re past that. Folks like Goldberg, Roach, Young, or, say, Brad Goreski, who styles Demi Moore, or Chris Horan of Charli xcx fame, or James Yardley, who has become instrumental to Connor Storrie’s rise as a breakout star with Heated Rivalry, are simply too effective and too fundamental to their clients’ public strategies.
But we might see some changes in the playing field as the pendulum starts to swing the other way.
When I spoke to Moore about her Gucci dress for the Oscars, she told me about how important her partnership with Goreski is. Collaboration is now the name of the game—those who look the best are working with people with whom they clearly have rich personal relationships. Stylists are no longer contracted staffers, but the best ones are as embedded into their clients’ worlds as their publicists and managers. Zendaya and Roach are the archetype of this relationship. And while stars consider whether they should move away from stylists to position themselves more uniquely, where I think this budding shake-up will land is in more versions of that kind of partnership—in which a stylist and an actor operate as an entity. Which, in the end, gives even more power to the stylists, the ultimate Hollywood and fashion power brokers.
