Timothée Chalamet might be playing Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown but he took inspiration from another rock icon – Mick Jagger – when it came to his outfit for the Baftas red carpet. He chose to paint it black.
In contrast to recent appearances where the actor rode a Lime bike on the red carpet in London and wore a pink tracksuit in Berlin, this appearance was more low-key. He wore a black Bottega Veneta cropped jacket matched with trousers and shoes in the same colour.
The colour choice chimed with a goth-tinged theme – lots of black, with added drama – that dominated the style at the award ceremony.
Like other outfits on the promo tour for A Complete Unknown, Chalamet referenced an outfit worn by Dylan – his stylist Taylor McNeil shared the inspiration image on her Instagram account.
Elsewhere on the red carpet, Zoe Saldana wore an evil queen-ish black gown with a frilled neckline made by Saint Laurent. If Cynthia Erivo’s Louis Vuitton lace dress was white, the extended bodice and pointy nails would have worked well at 80s goth club the Batcave, as would Gwendoline Christie’s long cobwebby plaits and black satin dress with torn sleeves made by Giles Deacon. The black and white cut-out dress, worn by designer Vera Wang with an oversized biker jacket, also worked here.
In menswear, meanwhile, Jeff Goldblum, attending the ceremony with his dancer wife Emilie Livingston, wore a tux with tails and a waistcoat covered with striking iridescent black and green feathers made by Loewe. A Real Pain star Will Sharpe, also in all black like Chalamet – but with added cool thanks to the classic movie star sunglasses – brought that ultimate goth signifier: black nail varnish.
Of course, black wasn’t only used in a goth context. Black and white are always popular choices for the red carpet and this was definitely the case here, with actors like Adrien Brody, Orlando Bloom and Jesse Eisenberg wearing classic black tuxedos, and stars like Pamela Anderson and Mikey Madison wearing all white. Lupita Nyong’o and Selena Gomez also wore dresses that were black and white.
Elsewhere, fashion moments came with print and colour. Ariana Grande’s Louis Vuitton dress, with its oversized frilled pink skirt was sugary sweet, while Colman Domingo’s outfit – with scarf print lining and unbuttoned shirt, studded gloves and pointed shoes – was indisputably the menswear look of the night. Isabella Rossellini’s robe covered with roses was a grown-up take on comfort and Saoirse Ronan’s dress – another by Louis Vuitton – in the palest of aquamarine, was simply but extremely elegant.
Goth fashion – which dates back to the 70s in the UK – has had something of a revival of late, with London labels like Dilara Findikoglu, Chopova Lowena and 16Arlington embracing the trend potentially due to new inspirations like the smash hit Netflix series Wednesday and the first album in 16 years from goth stalwarts The Cure. The Grammys last month also skewed towards a gothic aesthetic, with Miley Cyrus in black leather, Lady Gaga in an ornate black corset and – of course – Jaden Smith, in a black suit with a black castle hat covering his face. Whether or not this trend will carry over to the Oscars red carpet next month, remains to be seen.