Awards season fashion was fun again at the BAFTAs. The Met Gala’s dress code continues to be a work of art. Here’s what to expect at Frieze L.A., including all the fashion tie-ins. Plus, inside Sarah Staudinger and Ari Emanuel’s banger of a party to celebrate Staud’s artsy new Tommy bag.
BAFTAs Best Dressed and Nods to Britishness
The BAFTA Film Awards shook up awards season in more ways than one.
Maybe it was host Alan Cumming setting the bar with his signature eclectic style, or the chance to let loose across the pond, where the politics are arguably more royally messed up than they are in the U.S. But after weeks of banal black and white, celebrities had fun with fashion again on the red carpet — with plenty of nods to Britishness.
Best Drama
Chase Infiniti embodied the night’s playful mood, appearing as a modern-minimalist ingenue in a plum-colored custom Louis Vuitton mermaid gown, which “One Battle After Another” daddy Leonardo DiCaprio helped her navigate down the stairs in the photo above.
Nods to Merry England
Dramatic collars brought flair to several looks, including Teyana Taylor’s fab trench gown by British fashion stalwart Burberry, which offered plenty of opportunities for side-eye.
Archie Madekwe’s crystal-tipped pleated Dior collar brought to mind a ruff. A style associated with Elizabethan England, the pleated collar, fashionable with both men and women, was historically starched and sometimes even boned. But Dior designer Jonathan Anderson’s modern take is more relaxed, as seen in his Fall 2026 runway collection shown in Paris last month.
Meanwhile, the Leg-of-Mutton sleeves on Kirsten Dunst’s divine pale pink Valentino moiré jacket referenced a Victorian-era flourish, historically designed to accentuate a small waistline.
Royal Hues and Gardens of Delight
Colors popped all around. Wunmi Mosaku and Jessie Buckley twinned in royal blue gowns and BAFTA mask statuettes.
Jenna Coleman was one of many to wear regal red, choosing a nude illusion gown scattered with crimson embroidered roses from the Giorgio Armani Privé Fall 2023 collection.
Alicia Vikander’s custom Louis Vuitton gown, with cutout bodice and flowering embroidery, was an early spring treat.
Gracie Abrams was also in a romantic mood, making her red carpet debut with beau Paul Mescal, while wearing an intricately-embroidered Chanel floral gown with pretty green beaded trim from Matthieu Blazy’s 2026 Métiers d’art collection.
Storytelling With Style
Director Chloe Zhao was a ray of sunshine in a golden gown that was a sneak peek at Gabriela Hearst’s Fall 2026 collection, set to debut at Paris Fashion Week later this month. The repurposed ivory linen twill dress, coated in gold aluminum with laser-cut leaf motifs, was inspired by the Le Soleil XIX tarot card of the Major Arcana of the Tarot de Marseille, which represents joy and success. On Sunday night, it was a good luck charm, too, with Zhao’s “Hamnet” winning Best British Film.
“Marty Supreme” costume designer Miyako Bellizzi’s custom iridescent burgundy Renaissance Renaissance gown also had a good story.
Miyako and Cynthia Merhej, creative director of Renaissance Renaissance, first met and collaborated when Bellizzi tapped her for help with costumes for the film “Bonjour Tristesse” starring Chloë Sevigny. Meanwhile, Bellizzi has become somewhat of a red carpet darling this season, landing on Best Dressed lists after wearing another ravishing red gown, by up-and-coming designer Gabriele Semeraro, to the Governors Awards.
Few could compete with Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, and her storied royal jewels, including a sparkling diamond choker bracelet and dangling Art Deco earrings given to Queen Elizabeth on her wedding day.
But Regé-Jean Page brought personality to his all-black tonal Canali tuxedo adding a custom diamond dragonfly brooch by Hirsh London.
Alan Cumming also made a case for the brooch in place of a tie, wearing a diamond sunburst by British jeweler Atlas Carré, while sending a message of solidarity with his pink, blue and white hair curls, representing the colors of the trans flag.
Met Gala Dress Code a Work of Art
Art and fashion have long been intertwined, and their shared creative expression will take center stage at this year’s Met Gala, whose dress code was announced Monday.
The May 4 event will celebrate the opening of the 2026 Costume Institute exhibition, “Costume Art,” which explores how the dressed body appears throughout The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s permanent collection by presenting artworks dating back to prehistory, juxtaposed with 200 fashion garments and accessories.
The dress code, “Fashion Is Art,” is perhaps the most ambiguous to date, allowing for virtually anything that’s wearable and gorgeous. Perhaps that’s a good thing, sparing us from the Halloween costume party that the Met red carpet has sometimes become.
It was also announced Monday that Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos are not only sponsoring the event but also co-chairing it, alongside Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, and others—making the couple’s appearance at Paris Couture Week all the more logical.
Meanwhile, coming off the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics and at the start of Milan Fashion Week, Vogue global editorial director Anna Wintour and friends announced the location for the upcoming “Vogue World: Milan” show. It will be held Sept. 22 at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, marking the opening day of next season’s fashion week and, no doubt, a celebration of Italian style.
One of the world’s oldest shopping arcades, completed in 1877, the picturesque landmark features a striking glass dome that’s a perennial photo op. It is also home to the first-ever Prada store, opened in 1913, as well as numerous other fashion boutiques. In a case of art imitating life, the historic space features prominently in the trailer for “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” with Miranda Priestley finding herself eerily alone in the center of it all.
What to Expect at Frieze Los Angeles
Meanwhile, in L.A., there is already so much incredible art to see, from Wolfgang Tillmans at Regen Projects, Sarah Sze at Gagosian, Takashi Murakami at Perrotin, and the Eileen Norris Collection at Hauser & Wirth, to “Monuments” at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, “Robert Therrien: This Is a Story” at The Broad, and “What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem” at Variety Arts Theatre in DTLA.
And now Frieze L.A. is taking over the Santa Monica Airport from Feb. 26 to March 1, with 100 galleries from 17 countries—and its own fashion moments, not least of which is the off-the-charts street style to be enjoyed at the fair.
This year, L.A. fashion brand Frame has come on as a new Frieze sponsor, hosting 50 friends of the brand for the VIP preview day, who are enjoying curator tours and custom Frieze Frame baseball caps created for the group. Brand CEO Silvia Merati and other execs were also walking the aisles scouting L.A. artists for future collaborations.
Frame joins longtime supporter Stone Island. The Italian luxury menswear label is collaborating with Houston-based artist Jamal Cyrus to design the official Frieze staff uniform and a limited-edition T-shirt featuring a textured digital print of his work, available at the fair and at Stone Island’s La Brea store.
I went to a media preview for the fair last week, where Christine Messineo, Frieze’s Director of Americas, noted that many galleries will be celebrating the greats who established the L.A. art scene as “a hub for conceptual, photographic and politically engaged art, with practices engaging urgently with migration, identity, ecology and care.” Expect lots of big names, from James Turrell to Alex Israel.
I’m especially looking forward to seeing L.A. icon Betye Saar’s “Altered Polaroids,” sketchbooks, and archival materials, as well as figurative quilts by 86-year-old Alabama artist Yvonne Wells, whose work reflects Southern identity and iconic figures like Dolly Parton, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe. Up-and-comer Sharif Farrag’s trippy ceramics are on my list, as are Marley Freeman’s paintings inspired by her childhood spent surrounded by textiles at her family’s L.A. business Textile Artifacts.
There are also eight intriguing, free public art installations by L.A. artists being produced through Frieze Projects and the Art Production Fund. Grouped under the theme “Body & Soul,” the works speak to the current social climate.
Pictured above, at the Santa Monica Airport Park community garden, “BOD,” multimedia artist Polly Borland’s seven-foot soft sculpture questions ideals of beauty, confronting the perfectly primped and plumped bodies that are L.A.’s stock-in-trade.
Borland is a fascinating character, an Australian editorial and fine arts photographer who documented the punk and fashion scenes before becoming known for her celebrity portraiture of Nick Cave, Queen Elizabeth II, Jennifer Coolidge, and more. She collaborated with Gwendoline Christie on the 2018 photo series and book “Bunny” which turned the idea of the pinup on its head, and used her own body like Play-Doh in the 2023 series “Nudie and Blobs.”
Her sculptural technique involves wrapping and cocooning a live model in giant stocking tubes with stuffing, resulting in her organic, sculptural bodies of work. “It’s quite restrictive, with a lot of sensory deprivation,” she told me recently of the experience, which is its own kind of commentary on being a prisoner of one’s looks. “I like things to be more challenging than just beautiful.”
Frieze L.A., Feb. 26 to March 1, Santa Monica Airport, 3027 Airport Ave., Santa Monica, frieze.com. Advance tickets required.
Where Art and Fashion Mingle
Then there are L.A. Art Week’s off-site fashion happenings.
Power couple Sarah Staudinger and Ari Emanuel co-hosted a banging cocktail party at the Chateau Marmont Wednesday night.
L.A. fashion designer Staudinger and her husband, Endeavor CEO and founder of the global events and experiences company MARI—which includes Frieze in its portfolio—welcomed names from the fashion, entertainment, and arts worlds for drinks, music, and the debut of a new must-have Frieze accessory.
Staud created limited-edition beaded Tommy bags in partnership with rising Ethiopian abstract painter Merikokeb Berhanu, who is represented by James Cohan Gallery and featured at Frieze.
Dree Hemingway, fresh off her terrific turn playing Daryl Hannah in “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette,” toast-of-the-town “I Love L.A.” creator and star Rachel Sennott, Orlando Bloom, Marcela Kuara, Nick Kroll, Bill Maher, Nickolai Haas, Jeffrey Dietch and Brian Grazer were among the guests who packed the Penthouse balcony, sipping Champagne and enjoying cigarettes and bud.
“This is the first time I’ve hosted a party with my husband,” Staudinger said, as Emanuel pushed through the crowd to give her a smooch. “It’s so great to have something that’s not about entertainment or celebrity, but about culture in L.A.,” she added of her love for the art fair.
Inspired by Berhanu’s painting “Untitled CII” (2025), there are four unique Tommy bag designs, each an edition of 10 selling for $1,300 each. How perfect would they be for the Met Gala?
Elsewhere, Aritzia has taken over the shuttered Fred Segal Melrose flagship space to celebrate its latest “Artistic License” series, featuring works by Gregory Crewdson. The New York-based photographer’s cinematic prints of small-town life, which feel like moments suspended in time, have drawn comparisons to Edward Hopper, Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch, and are now reaching an even wider commercial audience, appearing across Aritzia retail stores and shopping bags.
The event is a homecoming of sorts for Aritzia, which just announced the acquisition of the Fred Segal IP. The Vancouver-based brand, which already curates a fair amount of third-party products for its own website and stores, is pledging to restore glory to the iconic L.A. fashion retailer’s ivy-covered flagship, which it is leasing, and to the launching pad it offered to so many emerging brands back in the day. The plan is to create an “experiential destination that will bring together curated product and immersive experiences,” according to press materials.
“Aritzia Artistic License Series: The Exhibition,” which will be open to the public Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at 8100 Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood, is apparently the first step. Tapping into a major L.A. event like Frieze certainly makes it feel like a good one.
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