Angelina Jolie is known to channel pure 1940s and ’50s glamour on the red carpet, so it’s more than fitting that her latest premiere dress is plucked from the bygone era itself. Jolie sourced an almost 70-year-old ivory gown from a couture icon for the Maria New York Film Festival premiere last night.
The actress donned a holy grail draped gown from the legendary French couturier Madame Grès, courtesy of the Paris-based Mon Vintage. The dress featured an elegant neckline that flowed into a fitted bodice composed of horizontal pleats. Her gown is dated to 1956—during the height of Grès’s prowess. Known as the “queen of drapery,” Grès’s use of fluid fabrics and sculptural draping came to define post-war Paris. Jolie, wearing Cartier jewelry and towering heels, carried an air of modernity as she posed on the red carpet. “[Jolie] picked the gown from our Paris showroom herself, making it all feel very personal,” Mon Vintage founder Marie Blanchet told Vogue. Blanchet’s vintage archive is also a favorite of Amal Clooney and Rihanna.
Jolie attended the premiere with three of her six children: Pax, 20, Zahara, 19, and Maddox, 23. Pax and Maddox opted for gray and black suiting while Zahara followed her mother’s cue in a champagne slip dress. Zahara’s dress bore a striking resemblance to Jolie’s 2004 Oscars gown that Sydney Sweeney happened to re-create earlier this year.
Jolie kicked off Maria press last month during the Venice Film Festival, bringing plenty of film star style along with her. She arrived to the festival in a belted Christian Dior trench before slipping into a sleek Saint Laurent gown that framed her dozens of back tattoos. For the film’s big red carpet debut, she paid homage to Maria Callas’s love of furs in a couture Tamara Ralph gown complete with a matching stole.
It’s clear that Jolie’s favored classic, refined silhouettes up until this point in her press tour. Her latest gown, a piece of sartorial history from one of the originators of couture, only doubled down on that prerogative.
