The first time Daisy Edgar-Jones attended a premiere in London’s Leicester Square – for 2024’s disaster sequel – she wore a corseted Vivienne Westwood gown with goddess draping in rich chestnut brown. Last night, for her second turn on the same red carpet, at the premiere of Georgia Oakley’s Sense and Sensibility, British ’s August cover star opted for another custom creation by the British label beloved by A-listers. “It feels so special to be wearing Westwood again,” enthuses the Muswell Hill-raised actress over the phone, mere hours before stepping in front of the cameras in a champagne-hued silk duchesse gown with a cinched waist and bow-detailed shoulders. “It’s so lovely to keep up that sense of tradition.”
The evening’s look nodded not just to the actress’s red carpets past, but also to the period pieces worn in Oakley’s retelling of Austen’s first novel, published in 1811. In it, Edgar-Jones plays the reserved and ever-empire-waisted Elinor Dashwood, for which she relished wearing corsets and bonnets that “didn’t feel like costume, but like a wardrobe”, thanks to the director’s decision to create individual capsule wardrobes for the Dashwood sisters. “We’ve been getting so excited and nerdy,” the 28-year-old actress says of the red-carpet looks she’s been dreaming up with Dani Michelle. The LA-based stylist, who also counts Hailey Bieber and Kendall Jenner among her ever-eyeballed clients, adds: “We’ve tried to thread every look back to her character and the time period, searching for corsetry, lace, puffed silks, florals and brocade.”
Which brings us to the jewellery. Archival pieces have become a fixture on the red carpet, thanks to method-dressing-inclined celebrities, and last night, Edgar-Jones opted for a museum-worthy Boucheron locket from 1877, affixed to a velvet ribbon. Crafted from yellow gold, silver and diamonds, the pendant features a landscape of foliage in browns and pinks. She also wore a cameo ring from the same year, adorned with Louis XV-inspired shell motifs, on her pinky finger. Back in February, Margot Robbie wore archival Boucheron on the red carpet, playing up to the Brontëan drama of her character, Catherine Earnshaw, with a Walkyrie brooch from 1900, boasting a cushion-cut red garnet at its centre.
Edgar-Jones had a plethora of archival Boucheron pieces as museum-worthy jewellery options for the red-carpet.
Feeling at ease in front of the cameras hasn’t always come naturally. In her British cover interview, Edgar-Jones told Radhika Seth about the anxiety she felt having her school photo taken as a child. How, then, does she calm her nerves before braving the flashbulbs today? “Camomile tea,” she says. “I’m also getting really good at breathing!” she adds, laughing. “If you breathe properly, it means you really take your time.” Her other red-carpet superpower, besides getting ready to a steady stream of Fleetwood Mac, Billie Holiday and Al Green? The dress itself. “You can’t slouch in Vivienne Westwood… it gives you great posture,” she says. “Wearing it is like armour.”
Her “cool and undone hair” echoed the tresses of Edgar-Jones’s character Elinor Dashwood.
Having relished wearing no make-up on the Sense and Sensibility set, Edgar-Jones is keeping things low-key for the premiere, too, with a sprinkling of Estée Lauder products and the magic touch of Nikki Wolff. She’s also opting for “cool and undone hair”, courtesy of Emilie Bromley, in response to the “wildness of the movie” and her character Elinor’s emergence as her true, untethered self. A make-up trick she’s borrowed for everyday life from her time on the red carpet? “Adding freckles, moles and imperfections, after make-up,” she says. “I’m always trying to learn things myself. It can be quite depressing getting your glam done when you can’t recreate it at home.”
With vintage Chloé, archival Rodarte and Westwood still to come, Edgar-Jones promises a “soft and whimsical colour palette” for the rest of the press tour. First, though, there’s the after-party. After all, her co-star Glen Powell told British that she knows how to throw a good one, and she isn’t planning on an camomile tea after the premiere. “I have so many friends coming who are Austen fans,” she enthuses. “So we’ll be hitting the after party.” Plenty, then, to fill the leather-bound Louise Carmen diary she reveals she’s been gifted after a morning of back-to-back press interviews. “Usually I write in the evening,” says Edgar-Jones, who journals every day. “It’s going to be a big update.”
