Sydney Sweeney dialed up the Old Hollywood glamour last night at the Vanity Fair Oscar’s After Party. But she wasn’t just wearing a Marilyn-esque white halter dress—it was the very Marc Bouwer dress that Angeling Jolie wore to the 2004 Oscars.
The Anyone But You actor was actually meant to wear the famous dress on two prior occasions (the first well over a year ago), but a change of plans allowed for the dress to shine on its home turf, on the 20th anniversary of Jolie hitting the carpet. “When I saw the Angelina gown, I was with Syd and I showed her and she was like, ‘Oh my God, we need to get that,’” Sweeny’s stylist Molly Dickson tells Vogue.
Unlike the many recreations of vintage dresses that have hit the red carpet, Sweeney’s Oscar night look was the very same one that Jolie wore 20 years ago. “In the past couple years, archive and vintage pieces have become a lot more popular, not only for the sustainability but [because] it’s a different way for actors to present themselves,” Dickson says of the recent celebrity endorsement of archival pieces. But that’s made finding them all the more difficult. “There are only a select few iconic archival pieces, or even vintage pieces. As a stylist, it’s my job to source the market. We reach out to a ton of different vintage sellers to try to find really cool vintage pieces, but it's tough, because there are only a few that are in great quality.”
Dickson emphasizes how important it was to preserve the integrity of the Bouwer dress, which had been preserved in storage for the last two decades and could not be altered. “It is a couple inches too long, so we sourced the highest platforms just to help with the hem,” she says.
As for the jewelry, Sweeney and Dickson turned to Messika to create a necklace that nodded to Jolie’s three-tier diamond piece. The jewelry brand created a custom 64-carat diamond and gold necklace for the actor. The three-row necklace highlighted two enormous diamonds—a 17.04 carat inverted pear-cut, and an 18.88 carat oval.
Sweeney and Dickson’s efforts undeniably paid off. We’re definitely seeing visions of Marilyn and Angelina.
