Celebrity Stunt Casting: The Habit Fashion Can’t Quit
Valentino offered a glimpse of the future when Sharon Stone emerged onto his spring/summer 1994 runway, to gasps from the audience gathered in Paris. The freshly-minted movie star was cast as the bride, closing the show in a white minidress, lace tights and booties, accessorised with a bouquet of red roses and a million-dollar smile. The surprise cameo had all the ingredients of what has since become a familiar (predictable, at this point) fashion week formula. The red carpet industrial complex was still in its nascent stages, and luxury brands were just cottoning on to the potential benefits of putting their clothes on the most popular stars. Post- Stone was Hollywood’s hottest property.
The now 68-year-old actor was lured back onto the runway once more in June of this year, striding out at Vetements’ menswear show wearing patent-leather thigh-highs and a death stare to make even Catherine Tramell wither. Though committed catwalk historians no doubt appreciated the rerun, such casting curveballs inevitably draw fewer gasps, these days. In the three decades between Stone’s turns at PFW, we’ve seen everyone from Rihanna to Tim Roth walking in shows.
Long before she was showcasing her own collections in Paris, a pixie-cropped Victoria Beckham modelled Maria Grachvogel’s satin hotpants at London Fashion Week – an image that remains as evocative of the new millennium as the opening strains of Santana’s “Smooth”. Beyoncé lent her palpable star power to Tom Ford’s intimate salon-style presentation for spring/summer 2011. J Lo did the same for Donatella in the spring/summer 2020 season, with the added bonus of a Noughties nostalgia trip: she prowled the runway in the same Versace jungle-print dress she’d worn to the Grammys two decades earlier (to internet-shaping effect).
Though a familiar face can still serve as a shot in the arm for a weary fashion pack weeks into the collections, stunt casting has become so widespread at this point as to feel almost by rote, prompting brands to enlist ever more leftfield candidates in a bid to capture that old element of surprise – or perhaps in some cases, to deliberately court controversy. (No one needs to see an accused sex offender on a runway.) Done well and timed right, though, the unexpected catwalk cameo can still capture a moment in pop culture, serve as a rallying cry for inclusivity, or officially anoint a new star. Revisit some of fashion week’s finest examples, below.
