Why jeans are the most glamorous, powerful red carpet move

By Liana Satenstein

It's true, Katie Holmes’s jeans outfit for the 2022 iHeartRadio Jingle Ball Awards has slowly taken over the internet. When I pulled up a blown-up image of Holmes on my computer, I initially saw the radiant actor in a sculpted deep blue strapless dress that hugged the waist. Red carpet appropriate, right? I slowly kept scrolling, and then bam! She wore it with a pair of loose light-wash jeans and worn-in sneakers. It was the mullet of all ensembles: The top was ready for any step-and-repeat event while the jeans were fit for her signature Whole Foods runs.

For the record, this wasn’t my favorite of Holmes’s looks. (She could have benefited from a more elevated shoe, quite literally. She looks great with some height!) But I love how Holmes often throws caution to the wind when she dresses. (See, for example, the famous Khaite knit bra and cardigan set.) Her wearing jeans on the red carpet plays into that mentality. In a heavily styled world of head-to-toe looks from one brand and fresh-from-the-runway viral pieces, wearing jeans on the red carpet is an unexpected choice.

In the late ’90s and the noughties, the most fun and effortlessly saucy women wore jeans on the red carpet. There was Mariah Carey in a pair with the waistband sheared off; Janet Jackson in her low-slung pants and cropped leather jackets combo; Cameron Diaz in her *Charlie’s Angels–*era kung fu-ready denim. Also in on the trend were Halle Berry, Drew Barrymore, and the list goes on. Typically, these women wore them with strappy, sparkly heels but sometimes a sneaker. These days, I’m getting public relations reps sending credits to my inbox about a celeb wearing a nondescript pinky ring at the opening of a door. Back then, starlets in jeans appeared as if they were going to a chic dinner with friends and then just happened to casually stop by this movie premiere or that awards show. Everyone looked fab, and not perfectly curated by a stylist.

By Emma Spedding

By Héloïse Salessy

By Frédérique Verley, translated by Ellie Davis and Grace Long

Cameron Diaz at the premiere of Requiem for a Dream in 2000.

Perhaps one of the best examples comes from the première dame of high-low fashion: stylist Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele. The famed French stylist famously put model Michaela Bercu on the cover of the November 1988 issue of Vogue, wearing a bejeweled Christian Lacroix cropped black sweater and a pair of stone-washed Guess jeans. Denim, to Cerf de Dudzeele, is the perfect canvas for flashy variables like a great bag or piece of glinting jewelry, afterwards. In a fantastic Moda Operandi in a series titled Fashion Firsts, Cerf de Dudzeele recalls that styling moment and speaks about jeans as if they are the lifeforce of the wardrobe, yelling: “This is the way that people wear this...la vie!”

Mariah Carey signs copies of her album Rainbow on November 5th, 1999 at Tower Records in West Hollywood, California.

By Emma Spedding

By Héloïse Salessy

By Frédérique Verley, translated by Ellie Davis and Grace Long

Cerf de Dudzeele makes a fantastic point. Jeans are what many people wear to navigate their day-to-day lives—celebrity or otherwise. So, when someone wears them on the red carpet, they are truly bringing a level of unbothered success to a meticulous space where custom made, overly styled looks are expected. It’s the inverse of wearing a really great, expensive bag with an everyday look, like Mary-Kate Olsen and her beat-up Hermès Kelly bag. Like Olsen—who has nothing to prove and wears her very expensive but busted bag to get a Starbucks—Holmes showed that red carpets are just another banal moment in her life. A great red carpet dress is powerful, but a pair of denim jeans? That’s power dressing.

Cameron Diaz at the 2000 MTV Music Awards.

Article originally published in Vogue US.

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By Emma Spedding

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