Last summer, Margot Robbie served look after look on the Barbie press tour.
From her striped Hervé Léger dress to her custom Schiaparelli Haute Couture gown, Margot — who starred in and helped produce the film — paid homage to a bunch of real-life Barbie dolls while on the press tour.
Needless to say, Margot’s iconic outfits sparked heaps of praise at the time — as did her incredible performance in Barbie.
But fast-forward to today, and Margot’s Barbie looks have become the subject of an online discourse surrounding the origins of dressing on theme while promoting a film.
Last week, a post on X, once known as Twitter, gained traction after it suggested that Margot single-handedly started the “trend” of dressing on theme for a film while promoting it.
“Barbie and Margot Robbie started a trend for press tours wherein leads are dressing in couture themed for their film for every appearance,” the post read, before mentioning Zendaya’s upcoming movie Challengers and Ariana Grande’s forthcoming project Wicked. At present, both Zendaya and Ariana have been dressing on theme of their respective projects ahead of their releases.
Now, it’s hard to note precisely when dressing on theme for a film while promoting it — now known as “method dressing” — became a thing, given that actors have repeatedly paid tribute to their projects through fashion for decades.
Here's Geena Davis wearing a dress with baseball stitching at the premiere of A League of Their Own in 1992, for example.