There’s a particular kind of magic that happens when celebrity styling stops feeling like promotion and starts feeling like storytelling. Ariana Grande has been threading that needle with quiet precision throughout the lead-up to Wicked: For Good, and at the 2025 Governors Awards, she delivered yet another chapter in her evolving Glinda-era fashion folktale—this time through the rarefied language of archive Dior.
Arriving alongside her co-star Cynthia Erivo, Grande chose a gown that embodied both nostalgia and intentionality: an archival Dior piece from John Galliano’s fall 2007 collection, sourced through Happy Isles. The dress itself reads like a love letter to mid-century glamour—a fitted, one-shoulder bodice cascading into a sculpted, floor-length skirt, its blush-pink fabric traced with beadwork in ruby, topaz, and rhinestone hues. It’s the sort of craftsmanship that feels almost whispered, as though the dress understands its own history.
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And history it has. The same gown once graced Claire Danes in a 2007 Vanity Fair editorial, a detail Grande seemed to honour rather than overshadow. She completed her look with Swarovski jewels, a tightened, architectural updo, and makeup that gently flirted with Old Hollywood without sinking into costume. It was devotion without imitation—a signature of her current approach.
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For Galliano’s original fall 2007 show, the designer looked backward, drawing from Christian Dior’s late-1940s and ’50s silhouettes. That lineage makes Grande’s choice feel almost inevitable; her press tour has steadily unfolded as a curated homage to Hollywood’s golden decades. Law Roach, her styling partner in this sartorial excavation of fashion history, has pulled everything from Gilbert Adrian ball gowns—ghosts of MGM’s costume vaults—to McQueen-era Givenchy. Between these archival showpieces, they’ve woven in contemporary couture from Thom Browne, Sarah Burton, and Balenciaga’s Pierpaolo Piccioli.
But what makes Grande’s choices resonate isn’t the price tag or provenance—it’s the way each look feels like a continuation of her character’s mythology. Her Glinda style isn’t a costume; it’s an aesthetic state of mind, built from soft pinks, architectural silhouettes, and a certain unaffected optimism. In wearing vintage Dior to the Governors Awards, Grande didn’t just dress for the night. She added another quiet stitch to the world she and Wicked are building
