It’s the season of sequins, sparkles and other highly flammable synthetics, right? Wrong. This winter, it’s all about the white dress. The chicest thing you can do, as shown by Anok Yai, Lily McMenamy and Sienna Miller at the Fashion Awards, is RSVP yes to the function, flout the festive dresscode and look positively ethereal, even bridal, in an ice-queen look suggesting you’re from a higher plane, where M&S 30 deniers aren’t the backbone of night-out dressing.
Read more: Every Major Red-Carpet Look At The Fashion Awards 2025
Admittedly, wearing a whisper of a babydoll dress is not for those predisposed to layering, but if a pregnant Sienna Miller can do it, so can you. The actor employed Givenchy’s voluminous sheer ivory netted gown, which Sarah Burton said was inspired by empowering female archetypes, to reveal the news that she is expecting her third child (her second with Oli Green) on the steps of the Royal Albert Hall. It was exactly the kind of no-holds-barred glamour – admittedly of Miller’s boho variety – that an evening like the Fashion Awards deserves.
Lily McMenamy, meanwhile, was ready to walk down the aisle, instead of up the Royal Albert Hall steps, in KNWLS. “When she came to the fitting, she ran in screaming, ‘It’s my wedding day!’,” recall Charlotte Knowles and Alexandre Arsenault of the cinched-to-high-heaven gown the model chose from the brand’s spring/summer 2025 bridal collection. “I think the drama of this piece really worked with Lily’s enigmatic energy – her porcelain skin and copper hair looked amazing with the crisp white fabric."
For Model of the Year Anok Yai, there was only ever one designer for her moment on the main stage. “Whenever you see a Dilara Findikoglu piece, you know that it’s her work right away,” says Yai. “I love the romance of her pieces – there’s this raw, edgy darkness to her work that I’ve been obsessed with.” Despite the grit at the heart of Findikoglu’s work (her hyper-corseted collections are typically called things like Femme Vortex, Venus in Chaos and Not a Man’s Territory), Anok’s Fashion Awards look could easily have been a custom wedding commission (check out photographer Harley Weir’s wedding to see a true Dilara bride.) The grand gown made it all the more moving as Yai thanked the industry for seeing her.
As her stylist and friend Carlos Nazario told Vogue’s Mahoro Seward: “With Anok, we have a real opportunity to create images that will stand the test of time, and that black and brown girls can always look back on. As much as this is about the moment and the look, it’s about creating an image and the lasting power of that image.” The shot of her hugging former Model of the Year recipients Alex Consani and Paloma Elsesser in couture-like fashion has almost been circulated as wide as the viral Howard University headshot that kickstarted Anok’s career in 2017.
Consider the other white dresses etched into the public consciousness: Grace Kelly in ivory pleats in To Catch A Thief; Marilyn Monroe’s gusty The Seven Year Itch moment; Elizabeth Taylor’s impossibly elegant Grecian-style gown in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. And that’s before we’ve even got to Björk and her Marjan Pejoski swan dress at the 2001 Oscars. Despite the colourless dress’s origins – Queen Victoria instigated white for weddings and black for mourning – countless Hollywoodites and supermodels have played with the sweet symbolism (think: chastity, purity, innocence) at the heart of unpigmented fashion in order to build their own narratives.
There’s nothing naive about Charli xcx writhing around in a Marianna Guerini deadstock cotton mini frayed with tendrils of cotton gauze and silk jacquard in her new “Chains of Love” video. Indeed, the popstar’s stunt double had to have a second identical distressed dress made for the scenes in which Charli is possessed by a higher power and thrown into the air (watch it for excellent wind machine work and hair swishing). See, too, the final scene in the video for “House” – the clanging banger she and John Cale conjured up for Wuthering Heights – in which Charli emerges from the forest as a sexy woodland spirit in a fragile upcycled floral dress by Taste of Moon. Psychoanalyse that!
From Naomi Watts and Elle Fanning, in custom Calvin Klein Collection and Ralph Lauren, at last night’s Gotham Awards to Anya Taylor-Joy and Jennifer Lawrence, in Maison Margiela and Dior, at the recent Governors’ Awards, there’s too many fresh dresses to say yes to this season already. Ask yourself this: why would you wear a classic LBD when its angelic, subversive counterpart is far more conversation-starting? “It’s about balancing toughness and softness all together,” said Findikoglu of her last haunting collection. “It comes from my soul. If I can’t explain something with words, I can through the garment.” Let’s leave people guessing this season.
