Last night, Zendaya made an emphatic break from an intense, three-week long tradition: she turned up to the Los Angeles premiere for Luca Guadanigno’s Challengers in a look that was not immediately themed around tennis. (If it was perhaps unclear from the actor’s Loewe tennis ball heels, racket-embellished Thom Browne dress, and custom On Running homage to Althea Gibson, this movie is about tennis.)
And so, rather than wearing a hirsute spring 2024 Christian Cowan ball in Wimbledon green, Law Roach styled the actor in custom Vera Wang. The dress had been constructed from a boudoir-ish bodice, which distended into a full-skirted ballgown, giving the impression of deliberate deshabillé, as if the design had been left unfinished on the mannequin. Zendaya looked good, but the look has inspired lots of discussion online, with some people confused at the much-underreported idea that underwear might also be considered outerwear. “What am I looking at exactly?” one person Tweeted, while someone else said, “What is that?”
This is a noble line of questioning—for what it’s worth, fashion should inspire inquisition—but the true grievance here is not Zendaya’s outfit. It is, in fact, the step and repeat at the Westwood Village Theatre that manages to make the actor look as though she was entering into a regional branch of Laser Quest. Much like the 2024 Emmys—where celebrities were made to stand against a logo-emblazoned wall that evoked corrugated plastic—these kinds of backdrops make it hard to appreciate (and let alone take in) someone’s fashion choices. If Hollywood executives want to package film premieres as fashion-adjacent events, it’s high time they started taking pointers from the catwalk canvas.