How celebrities’ red-carpet looks get a second life after awards shows

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told CNN.“Now, often when a gown is worn on the red carpet, there is usually a plan put in place for where that gown will end up.”A rare few are gifted to or bought by the A-list wearer — for instance, Kim Kardashian has an archive of many of her Met Gala looks, while Zendaya purchased her show-stopping 1996 black, John Galliano-designed Givenchy gown from fashion’s biggest night in 2024 — a trend that was more popular decades ago.Bishop told CNN that Nicole Kidman’s 1997 Oscars dress — a chartreuse number from Galliano — was a piece that “changed the trajectory of red-carpet dressing” and marked the beginning of brands “very publicly partnering with a celebrity and sort of officially dressing them for the red carpet.”Prior to that time, it was more commonplace for the celebrity to keep the gown they wore on the carpet, and, according to CNN, sometimes those gowns would even be sold or given away.Today, most ensembles are put in storage or on display in galleries, while some are auctioned for hefty sums.“Most of the time it gets returned and is stored in the designer’s archives,” stylist Tanya Gill previously told Vanity Fair in 2017, although there are rare exceptions when designers will “gladly gift the gown,” Gill added. “It’s like Cinderella, you wear it to the ball, and at midnight it has to go back.”According to Cleveland Museum of Art’s chief conservator Sarah Scaturro, the gowns undergo cleaning, since the person who donned the garment “might have on body lotions, oils, perfumes, makeup.” She told CNN that “even if you don’t see that right away … over time, these materials and stains can actually start to oxidize and they will start changing the color of the fabric, and maybe even the texture.”Sometimes the.