If you want to relive the frenzied fever dreams you had as a child after a sugar high, try watching the VMAs. The ceremony last Wednesday was a weird mix of cartoon outfits and hammy nostalgia in a hasty scrabble to stay relevant. Why else would they give Katy Perry an award for a performance she gave in 2013 and make Megan Thee Stallion dress up in a replica of Britney Spears’s ‘I’m a Slave 4 U’ costume?
On the red carpet, musicians also played up to nostalgia. Sabrina Carpenter’s Bob Mackie gown was originally worn by Madonna at the 1991 Oscars. Addison Rae too said her outfit was ‘a little bit Madonna’. Meanwhile, Tate McRae’s lace black dress was a clear callback to an outfit worn by Britney at the 2001 VMAs, and Halsey wore a Versace dress originally sported by Liz Hurley in 1996. Get those references, baby!
Actors have been ‘method dressing’ for a while, taking to premieres in outfits that allude to the film that they are promoting. Zendaya, the queen of the referential outfit, started dressing on theme during the press run for The Greatest Showman in 2017. Last year, Margot Robbie’s recreations of doll outfits ahead of Barbie’s release endlessly circled around social media, and soon, it will be pretty impossible to avoid Ariana Grande in pink and Cynthia Erivo in green as they embark on their Wicked promotional tour.
The internet made reference dressing easy. Stylists know that fans will be able to search for archive photos, zoom in on tiny details and exchange information in the comment section. Subtle allusions won’t be missed. Social media has turned fashion into something nerdier and more joyful, and reference dressing plays into that.
There’s a more calculated edge to the themed choices, though. It’s a tactic to make red carpet outfits stick out in an internet full of other red carpet outfits. It means there’s more to say about a celebrity other than ‘she looks nice’, and there’s the possibility that one look alone could generate a couple of articles and a reliable stream of social media dissection. Promotion is everything.
There’s a difference between the reference dressing of pop stars and movie stars. Actors method dress to communicate something about the product they are trying to sell you rather than anything about themselves. Their referencing outfits reflect less of their personal taste and more of their career choices. It’s advertising, but it’s also a way to sever parasocial relationships. Maybe that’s why Zendaya, self-described as shy and generally very private, has taken to it so much.
At the VMAs, meanwhile, there was a different purpose at play. Musicians dressed to reference iconic pop stars they wanted to be associated with, in order to build their own brand. It makes sense that Tate McRae’s PR team wants us to see her as the next Britney and thereby cultivate a fierce, sexy image. Aligning Sabrina Carpenter with Madonna is also strategic. Both are flirty, playful, and poppy, and the comparison highlights a sense of sexuality that is lost when she’s labelled as one of ‘Taylor’s daughters’ – a phrase that also gives away our inability to talk about pop stars without referencing what’s gone before.
Art will always reference other art. Give me your best rendition of Roland Barthes: the text is a tissue of citations. When Madonna dressed as Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for the ‘Material Girl’ music video, the reference was clearly chosen to draw on themes of sexuality, wealth, and objectification, and not just because Monroe looks hot when she sings ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’. Carpenter is also capable of pulling off interesting, meaningful reference points – her most recent music video, ‘Taste’, is a fun homage to Death Becomes Her and other campy horror. But the referential dressing at the VMAs was much hollower. When Carpenter wore Madonna’s old dress, it said little else beyond ‘I am a bit like Madonna’.
(Isn’t it crazy that the gap between Madonna referencing Monroe (31 years) is just about the same as the gap between Carpenter referencing Madonna (33 years)? Does it not feel like popular taste hasn’t evolved that much in the last three decades?)
Pop culture is stuck in a nostalgia loop of movie remakes, TV show spin offs and a saturation of nepo babies who give us the slightly more spoilt version of the stars we used to love. Pop stars in outfits originally worn by former icons is just another iteration of a long-standing stagnation. The internet makes it so easy to look back at the past: how can we come up with new ideas when we are so overwhelmed by old ones?
Music executives rely on former child stars to fit into predetermined roles because it’s the safest investment. Fans, though, are getting bored of this: it says a lot when the two biggest – and arguably most original – pop albums of the summer, BRAT and The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, are made by two women who did not achieve mainstream success as teenagers. Neither were nurtured to fame by record labels who ran out of fresh ideas decades ago.
Pop might eat itself, eventually, but we’ll still be hungry for more.
Such an interesting piece! Is noticed Kim Kardashian in Monroe’s happy birthday Mr President dress a few years ago, but didn’t realise it was such a ‘thing’. This is nostalgia on another level. But I’m ’here for it’s as the young people say, because it’s so playful.
Loved this too “nepo babies who give us the slightly more spoilt version of the stars we used to love” so true!!!