Leant against the corner of a dimly lit dining room in mutton sleeves and a corseted pantsuit, Zendaya looks as though she is perhaps going to parse a crowd with a smoking revolver spinning around her fingers. Or break into a medieval drinking song with a group of buccaneering, but lovable, drunks. But such is the allure of Andreas Kronthaler’s work at Vivienne Westwood: producing clothing that feels rooted in historic dress and yet untethered from a particular era in time.
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As documented in an Instagram Reel by the actor’s “image architect,” Law Roach, Zendaya was not making a tacit audition for some kind of period drama, of course, but posing at a high-ranking restaurant during the most recent edition of Paris Fashion Week. The actor approached the spring-summer 2024 shows as an opportunity to reconnect with the fashion establishment, which, given the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, also meant getting glammed up in lots of covetable clothes.
As a global ambassador for the house, Zendaya spent most of the week in Louis Vuitton: a custom, zip-through dress designed by Nicolas Ghesquière and his 2015 gladiator skirt-bandeau top set, and then a puff-sleeve blouse from a 2004 collection designed by Marc Jacobs. But she also wore a polka-dot Balmain dress taken from Olivier Rousteing’s SS24 collection. It tracks, then, that she might have wanted to dial it down a notch (i.e., wear a jumper) when arriving back in London with Tom Holland.
This article first appeared on British Vogue.