With a face card and a fashion game that never fail, Zendaya truly can show up on a red carpet wearing anything and look great. Her list of iconic fashion looks is long and legendary, whether it’s an oversized bowler hat, a futuristic take on a classic red dress or a dramatic “ponytail train” gown paired with blunt bangs seemingly inspired by Courteney Cox’s infamous Scream 3 ‘do. However, I think she’s outdone herself with her C-3PO-esque look for the Dune: Part Two premiere.
Her most recent appearance — at the U.K. premiere of her much-anticipated sci-fi epic Dune: Part Two — seems to be a callback to one of the style icon’s most memorable sartorial moments. The 27-year-old actress showed up to the movie premiere in a full-metal utterly fierce Thierry Mugler look from the designer’s AW 1995 Couture collection, per Cosmopolitan.
The robotic ensemble combined metallic armor with transparent plastic paneling, offering a titillating peek at the nude bodysuit the movie star was wearing underneath. And if that wasn’t enough high-fashion interest for you, the galactically gorgeous spectacle was finished with a stunning sapphire-and-diamond necklace laid over top. Her Dune: Part Two co-stars Timothée Chalamet and Florence Pugh might be playing royalty in the movie, but Z’s look is giving space-age queen:
It’s not the first time that Zendaya has adorned herself in armor for a red carpet. There was, of course, that custom, chainmail Versage gown she wore to the 2018 Met Gala, where she looked like the next extremely stylish coming of Joan of Arc. The Euphoria star also spearheaded the metallic breastplate movement, showing up to the 2021 Critics Choice Awards in a molded, bright-pink breastplate from Tom Ford.
Funnily enough, Chalamet seemingly took inspiration from his famous co-star, showing up to Dune: Part Two‘s Paris premiere on February 12 wearing a black Givenchy suit over a silver metal breastplate. The actor has admitted to taking style cues from Zendaya’s red-carpet looks when it comes to dressing himself for his own promos and premieres.
You have to be a pretty epic dresser to have style king Timothée Chalamet obsessing over your looks, and even their Dune co-star Florence Pugh — who is no slouch in the fashion department either — has confessed to also trying to imitate “cute” Zendaya.
Helping Z become the fashion queen that she is, of course, is her longtime stylist, Law Roach. Roach previously told Harper’s Bazaar that he likened styling the actress to “method dressing, kind of like method acting.” The duo clearly take inspiration from the given project that the performer is promoting at the time — in the Denis Villeneuve-directed flick, Zendaya plays Chani, a young Fremen warrior and the love interest of Chalamet’s Paul Atreides who fights to take back her land on Arrakis — and her looks for the Dune rollout have been fittingly science fiction-y, and in this case robot and C-3PO like.
You’ll be able to see Z, Chalamet, Pugh and the rest of the very fashionable cast of Dune: Part Two when the sci-fi epic hits theaters on Friday, March 1 on the 2024 movie schedule. There will undoubtedly be fierce battle scenes throughout, but with armor like this, we already know Zendaya is ready.
