Vanity Fair's Ultimate Golden Globe Fashion Moments
On Sunday, the biggest names in Hollywood will turn out for the 83rd annual Golden Globe Awards, which will honor the best of film and television. Nominees for best director include Paul Thomas Anderson, Joachim Trier, and Ryan Coogler, whose films, One Battle After Another, Sentimental Value, and Sinners, top off the list of the most nominated movies, earning nine, eight, and seven nods, respectively. Fear not, Wicked: For Good fans: The second part of Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of the beloved musical is trailing right behind, having received five nominations. On the TV front, The White Lotus and Adolescence are topping the list of the most nominated series.
The Globes effectively kick off awards season, and my colleagues have been hard at work predicting who will take home the most coveted prizes. They’re answering some of the season’s most pressing questions: Will Jessie Buckley, the star of Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, effectively cement herself as the front-runner for the Oscar for best actress? Could this finally be Timothée Chalamet’s year? Will it be Ariana Grande or Teyana Taylor who takes the best-supporting-actress statuette?
On the style side of Vanity Fair, however, I’m looking at what the glitteratti will be wearing on the red carpet. The Golden Globes always serve as a proper precursor to the rest of awards season when it comes to not just film, but fashion too. Stars bring out their A-game and show off their relationships with brands and designers: Who is getting that coveted archival piece? Who will be the first to wear a piece from which designer’s most recent runway collection? As the answers to those queries arise behind the scenes and start to hit my inbox, we’ve decided to look back at the sartorial history of the Golden Globes. Read about our top picks below, and for up-to-the-minute news from the Golden Globes 2026, don’t miss our live blog on Sunday!
Audrey Hepburn received the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1990 at the 47th annual Golden Globes. A past winner for best actress in a drama motion picture, having earned the prize for Roman Holiday, Hepburn achieved a total of 10 nominations during her lifetime. Here, she wears a striking white gown with no detailing other than a sharp shoulder—always the picture of elegance and simplicity.
One of the most memorable and definitive images of Julia Roberts is from the 1990 Golden Globes, where she won best supporting actress for her role in Steel Magnolias. For the ceremony, Roberts wore a men’s Armani suit she bought herself. She had it tailored to fit her, and the rest is fashion history.
By the 1996 Golden Globes, the cast of Friends was still on the rise. When Lisa Kudrow, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, David Schwimmer, and Matt LeBlanc walked the carpet together at that year’s ceremony, their presence became undeniable. The three actresses’ looks served to show off their own personalities and channeled aspects of their characters: Kudrow’s quirky style, Aniston’s utterly minimal point of view, and Cox’s glitzy elegance would become signatures fans would replicate for decades on.
Demi Moore famously shaved her hair for 1997’s G.I. Jane. At that year’s Golden Globes, she appeared on the red carpet alongside her then husband, Bruce Willis, donning the shortest of pixie cuts and a dress with silver floral appliqués, which we can now say is one of the earliest and most successful examples of one of today’s most enduring trends: naked dressing.
Your eyes are not deceiving you: The one and only Barney the dinosaur attended the Golden Globes in 1998, wearing his own version of a tuxedo. How could he not make this list?
Angelina Jolie kicked off the second-to-last year of the 20th century by wearing a sparkly Randolph Duke Couture gown to the 1999 Golden Globes, where she won for her role in Gia. This was the infamous night on which Jolie jumped into the pool during a postshow interview following her win, dragging the interviewer with her. Fear not—she was not wearing this dress.
At the 1999 Golden Globes, Cameron Diaz wore a memorable—if divisive—floral off-the-shoulder kimono-style coat by Chloé. The floral piece helped cement Diaz’s style as a true archetype of what would eventually become known as “boho chic,” and while she did not necessarily top everyone’s best-dressed list that evening, it remains one of her most impactful looks of all time.
Speaking of infamous, Courtney Love wore a shredded Dior Haute Couture dress by John Galliano to the 2000 Golden Globes. The gown belonged to Galliano’s controversial Haute Homeless collection, and it is remembered as a defining contributor to Love’s sartorial definition of punk rock.
Halle Berry has become a fixture of awards season red carpets, and one of her most famous appearances was at the 2000 Golden Globes, where she donned a white lace Valentino dress with cascading red embellishment while accepting the award for best actress for her role in Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.
Salma Hayek was nominated for her role in Frida at the 2003 Golden Globes, where she wore a star-making gown by Narciso Rodriguez. If her turn as the acclaimed Mexican artist cemented her as one of the most beloved actors of her generation, so did this gown.
The late Diane Keaton will be remembered for her endearing characters and prolific career in Hollywood, in addition to her legendary and influential style. When she won the Golden Globe for best actress in a comedy or musical in 2004, Keaton donned a head-to-toe white ensemble that could have easily read as bridal if not for her intrinsic cool.
Beyoncé wore a sequined Elie Saab number to the 2007 Golden Globes, where she was nominated for her role in Dreamgirls. With a dress cut close to the body and fashioned in shimmering gold and silver, the multihyphenate looked like a billion dollars, and like the statuette itself.
Angelina Jolie figures twice on this list, and how could she not? The white gown with a striking red accent that she wore to the 2012 Golden Globes remains one of the most memorable outfits worn on the awards’ red carpet…ever.
Tilda Swinton has got to be one of the best-dressed women alive. In 2012 she had what might be one of her best sartorial moments ever when she wore an ice blue ensemble by her dear friend Haider Ackermann, featuring the designer’s signature sharp tailoring and swaddling draping.
Lupita Nyong’o’s awards season run in 2014, when she was nominated for best supporting actress for her role in 12 Years a Slave, is one of the most memorable in recent memory. Not only because it was her breakout season as an actor and she won many of the awards for which she was nominated, including the Oscar, but because of how fantastic she looked. One of her best style moments was this red Ralph Lauren dress.
Lady Gaga’s status as a “serious actor” was cemented when she won a Golden Globe for her turn in Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story: Hotel. Her appearance at the ceremony that evening was immortalized by an abundance of memes of her brushing past Leonardo DiCaprio on her way to accept her award, though this velvet Atelier Versace dress has been etched in our minds since then too.
Cate Blanchett, one of the indisputable queens of the red carpet, wore this Givenchy couture dress by Riccardo Tisci to the 2016 Golden Globes. It remains one of her most memorable looks to date.
Timothée Chalamet is the first man to appear on this list. That is because it wasn’t until the late 2010s that men started really dressing up in anything other than a standard black tux. Much of what menswear looks like on the red carpet today can be credited in part to Chalamet’s run following his breakout role in Call Me by Your Name. Who could forget the black embellished harness the actor wore to the 2019 ceremony? It was designed by the late Virgil Abloh for Louis Vuitton.
Josh O’Connor won a Golden Globe in 2021 for his starring role as a young Prince of Wales on The Crown. However, you may recall that the pandemic-era 2020 ceremony was televised, but actors accepted their awards via Zoom. Still, O’Connor looked the part: that of a contemporary leading man, in a custom suit by Jonathan Anderson for Loewe.
Anthony Vaccarello designed Donald Glover’s relaxed Saint Laurent pajama-style suit for the 2023 Golden Globes. If there is one ensemble that can help illustrate how sartorial red-carpet rules in menswear have quite literally loosened up in the past several years, it’s certainly this one.
Dua Lipa posted a now viral video of herself struggling to sit down at the 2024 Golden Globes in this custom Schiaparelli gown designed by Daniel Roseberry. It was hilarious, and it illustrated just how uncomfortable these dresses can be. But did she really need to sit? She looked fantastic standing in this gown.
Greta Lee has cemented herself as one of the best-dressed women in Hollywood, with an assist from stylist Danielle Goldberg. It was this white Loewe ensemble by Jonathan Anderson, which she wore to the 2024 Golden Globes during her run as a nominee for Past Lives, that helped seal the deal.
Could there be a “best-dressed of all time” list without Zendaya on it? Her most memorable Golden Globe outfit was this orange gown by Nicolas Ghesquière for Louis Vuitton, which she wore to the ceremony in 2025. Images of her in this dress flooded the internet—it helped, of course, that it was the first time she was seen in public wearing her then new engagement ring. Tom Holland is one lucky man!
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