God she’s good: three weeks after the couture shows wrapped in Paris, Zendaya has snapped up one of the most Instagrammed dresses for the Dune: Part 2 promo tour. The catch? It’s also one of the most challenging to wear.
The 27-year-old fashion chameleon, who has categorically proven she can pull off anything her “image architect” Law Roach throws at her, posed for pics in front of the Eiffel Tower wearing Alaïa’s sculptural white bandeau dress that’s a feat in fashion engineering. Crafted, like all the other pieces in the autumn/winter 2024 collection, from merino wool over a painstaking year-long process, Pieter Mulier was inspired by the simplest of forms: the circle.
“I mean, we did va-va-voom for two-and-a-half years, and I still love it, but it’s not the moment where the world is now,” said the creative director of stripping things back, but going granular on technique. “It’s less sexualised, but still sensual.” Zendaya, whose best accessory is Timothée Chalamet, is the perfect poster girl for this new dawn at Alaïa which, while paying homage to Azzedine, resolutely drives the house forward for clients like herself who lust after newness.
The conceal-and-reveal look is all in a day’s work for Dune’s leading lady, who has used the science fiction epic as a platform to showcase the work of designers who think outside the box. Britain’s bright young things Torishéju and Paolo Carzana have received Zendaya’s stamp of approval this year, and with the UK premiere the night before London Fashion Week kicks off, Roach surely has a capital look waiting in the wings. Paris, however, demands haute drama, and there is only one woman who could pull of la robe spirale, as Mulier affectionately called his curly dress, and generate a special kind of social-media vortex of her own.
