Why Hollywood’s Red Carpets May Never Come Back the Way They Used to Be

At first glance, it was business as usual on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival in early September. Jury president Cate Blanchett appeared on opening night in a sparkly Esteban Cortazar gown, albeit “recycled” from an earlier wearing, and later broke out several Armani Privé and Alexander McQueen numbers, some new, some repeats. Tilda Swinton, accepting a lifetime achievement award, appeared in Chanel Haute Couture, while Pieces of a Woman’s Vanessa Kirby wore achingly sleek styles from
Valentino Couture.

The Venice festivities were the biggest aggregation of designer names seen on stars in many months, since the last major red carpet at the Oscars in February. In between, the globe hunkered down amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. The style world, along with many other industries, mostly screeched to a halt, save for fashions spotted on stars on their IG feeds or out for a masked walk.

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Roberta Armani, the niece of designer Giorgio Armani, who heads his celebrity and VIP relations, says the house made its return as an effort to get back to normal. “This is important for many reasons — for our mental health, for our economy, for our confidence in the future,” she wrote to THR. “It may be that for some time to come we all need to live in a new way with restrictions on how we can behave, but we need to navigate this reality in a way that shows that we can see a light at the end of the tunnel. Armani is so associated with the red carpet, with movie stars and film, that if there is a Venice Film Festival, we simply have to be there to support it.”

Closer to home, one L.A. rep for a number of international fashion houses, who asked not to be identified, isn’t so sure. “How do you justify an awards show coming back when kids can’t even go to school?” Admitting that the Venice event “managed the red carpet beautifully by not putting the emphasis on everything new,” she says some Hollywood stars are still shying away from that kind of exposure because of some blowback early in the pandemic: “I think people just got scared, like, ‘We look privileged. We look out of touch.’”

In the United States, where new coronavirus cases have been averaging around 40,000 per day, large-scale entertainment gatherings have yet to resume anyway and probably won’t until sometime in 2021. And the virtual Emmys on Sept. 20 obviously did without the red carpet. Yet, in recent years, exposure at major award shows and film premieres has been regarded as crucial to most major fashion houses. Many red carpets are basically parades of stars paid directly, or indirectly as “ambassadors,” wearing a limited number of brands that pony up big bucks for exposure.

Though no one really goes out to buy an actual gown seen on the red carpet, the halo effect is assumed to be crucial to selling a brand’s handbags, fragrances and makeup. “Luxury brands have always wanted to be as close to the arts as possible because it allows them to claim a place in that cultural landscape,” says Thomaï Serdari, director of the fashion & Luxury MBA at NYU’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. “And it’s also increasing your brand’s equity through a communications strategy.”

But does the lack of a red carpet really affect the bottom line? It’s hard to say just how crucial it is or if the big brands only underwrite red carpets because all of their competitors do. In 2020, industry revenues are estimated to drop about 20 percent from 2019 globally, with U.S. revenues for designer apparel and accessories dropping from $1.97 billion to $1.5 billion, according to researcher Euromonitor International.

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A study by forecaster Boston Consulting Group noted that the COVID-19 crisis and recent protests to end racism “have made existing social inequities even more apparent and people less comfortable with easy and conspicuous affluence.” Not to mention that some states closed retail stores amid the pandemic and, even if they’re now reopened, some shoppers may be wary of coming back. A recent poll by Harris Insights Analytics and Sense Photonics found that one-third of Americans would be happy never to step foot in a traditional retail store again.

The L.A. designer rep doesn’t think the pause in red carpet publicity will really affect many brands’ bottom line, and that in an unexpected way, fewer events right now mean the “hit” stands out even more. “We are really making sure that we get every ounce of press from the things that are happening.” That includes appearances at events such as drive-ins, including the recent screening of the film Shadow in the Cloud where actress Chloë Grace Moretz wore head-to-toe Louis Vuitton.

Some designers even seem sanguine about the months in lockdown. “I love the red carpet, and always will, but it actually has been a nice break so I can focus on other amazing parts of fashion, such as the customers who love the brand and shop the clothes in our store,” says Christian Siriano.

 

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#ShadowInTheCloud drive in premiere at TIFF the other day! So excited to be part of such an incredible project. And I really can’t wait for you all to be able to see this beautiful piece ! @tiff_net #MidnightMadness

A post shared by Chloe Grace Moretz (@chloegmoretz) on Sep 12, 2020 at 10:02am PDT

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One bright spot has been athleisure, with Lululemon reporting a second quarter sales increase of 157 percent over 2019. Sam Kershaw, buying director for Mr Porter, backs that up. “As you would imagine in the last few months, our tailoring sales are not what they would have been. We are selling more categories like sportswear and denim.”

Thomas though is confident that the fashion business will figure out how to adapt. “I know a lot of them are saying sustainability is the topic now — finally — and ethical shopping, so maybe they’ll shift away from, ‘You need a new glamorous garment on the red carpet,’ to something more on message with what’s happening in the world right now. And they’ll figure out how to monetize it, because they figure out how to monetize everything.”

This story first appeared in the Sept. 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.