Dakota Johnson has ensnared another top brand for her method dressing journey on the Madame Web promo tour. Gucci is the latest label to get tangled up in the world of complex mesh and latticework in an effort to make Marvel’s new leading lady look like she embodies her character, who is not, in fact, a sexy arachnid, but a clairvoyant and precognitive mutant. Take that Spider-Man!
As well as a structural feat in crystal suspension (naked dresses don’t come more naked), the custom look is an industry coup. One of the first red-carpet gowns to come out of Sabato De Sarno’s Gucci, the spangled scene-stealer signals Johnson, whose stylist Kate Young describes as having the “body of a stripper,” is top of designers’ wish lists to wear their agenda-setting designs (Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa modeled the creative director’s inaugural eveningwear).
While her Madame Web co-star Sydney Sweeney also embraced the haute net look in Oscar de la Renta, the Euphoria pin-up barely got a look into the method-dressing game. It’s a crowded space, with Margot Robbie still somehow plugging Barbie references during awards season, and Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet living in a Dune-inspired fashion battlefield: all artfully ravaged, directional looks from the industry’s hottest talent, who are all keen for a slice of the celebrity pie. Amidst the knot of webs, bubblegum and sandscape armor, it’s impossible to know what anyone actually looks like anymore! Even Zendaya, who has been paying homage to her characters since her own Spiderverse days, must agree that we’ve reached peak film reference.
With the internet in a forever lust affair with the sheer dress, something tells us this isn’t the last we’ll see of Dakota’s bewebbed bottom cheeks. But, as the Oscars approaches, it would pay to practice subtle nods–like the tiny gold bear Jeremy Allen White carried in his suit pocket at the Golden Globes–to avoid looking like a cartoon character in Hollywood’s Hall of Fame later down the line. Personal style for the win!