“Everyone Is Requesting Wow”: The Vintage Fashion Celebs Most Want To Wear This Awards Season

Hollywood’s red carpets are as much about spotting your favorite celebrity (Timmy, we love you) as they are about the business of fashion. Indeed, the once-casual act of walking a step-and-repeat is now, more often than not, a financial transaction between brands and stars. We’ve closely charted the way fashionistas want to be the first ones to wear something fresh off the runway, dying for a sliver of exclusivity in a sea of events, galas, and premieres (something we’re bound to see more of once the Fall/Winter 2025 season wraps up). The same can be said for vintage dresses in 2025: Stars want to be the first and only person to wear an older treasure. Archives and showrooms are a Hollywood stylist go-to, bridging the gap between dream and reality by tracking down holy-grail dresses and helping to respond to — and anticipate — celebrity trends.

“Everyone is requesting ‘iconic, wow, glam,’ and, my favorite, ‘rare,’” says Johnny Valencia, the owner of Pechuga Vintage, whose extensive collection has been spotted on Camila Cabello for NYLON France and Lady Gaga for Vogue.

He also agrees with Brynn Jones of Aralda Vintage and Lauren Lepire of Timeless Vixen on the most-requested designer of this awards season (and in general): John Galliano. “His aesthetic channels the past while keeping an edgy, current vibe in mind,” Lepire tells NYLON. “Stylists are looking for the seductive, form-fitting, bias-cut silhouettes which were really popular in the ’90s.” Case in point: For her appearance at the British Independent Film Awards, newcomer Mikey Madison wore a svelte John Galliano-designed Christian Dior dress sourced by Aralda.

With so many microtrends floating in the TikTok-sphere, our favorite stars have leaned into a more classic glamour. Jones agrees: “Stylists are gravitating toward beautifully feminine silhouettes. There’s a strong essence of Old Hollywood influencing red carpet choices right now.” Alex Cohen and Grant Ellis of TheRealList have helped stylists source rare Versace grails in this vein, including the silver chainmail number seen on Kylie Jenner at the Golden Globes where they say “she didn’t walk the carpet, [but] undeniably stole the show.” They’re also seeing an uptick in interest in “structured looks that use corsetry and boning to define the waist,” which was a ’90s staple.

For the Oscars, we can expect to see lots of the nipped-in waist and bias-cut silks we’ve been seeing on stars like Anya Taylor-Joy, Selena Gomez, and Monica Barbaro. Many online have lamented the fallback to traditional shapes, but when there’s already so much great fashion waiting to be selected, why not lean into the past? With resources like archival Instagram aesthetic pages and reboots of old media seemingly happening more often than new content, it’s clear stars and creatives want to channel a bygone era.

The vintage collectors are not only facilitators of the rarities lost to fashion’s short-term memory; they’re able to help shape conversations about which pieces should be remembered and highlighted. And even for them, a few things are still out of reach, like the “motherf*cking Armadillo shoes from [Alexander] McQueen’s Plato’s Atlantis,” says Valencia, and for Lepire, it’s a McQueen Fall/Winter 2008 peacock dress. More than anything, it’s about the chase, and the thrill of discovering something once-untouched, ready to make waves and be a standout in fashion history among hundreds of other glamazons.