MAGIC CARPET RIDE

For some inseparable designer-celebrity pairs, the awards circuit has become the ultimate stage.

- By Alexandra Hildreth

Elle Fanning wears a McQueen design by Sarah Burton to the Cannes Film Festival in 2023.

When Pedro Pascal appeared on a red carpet this past summer in a cream jacket paired with a spotted silk foulard and red carnation in the breast pocket, some fans took it as a subtle nod toward a classic Indiana Jones look. (A few even asked: Could it be an Easter egg pointing to the actor’s next role?)

But fashion followers were enraptured for an entirely different reason. Tom Ford designer Haider Ackermann had collaborated closely with Pascal on the actor’s press tour for The Fantastic Four: First Steps, where the pair casually subverted suits that embodied the sultry Ford appeal. “Haider is more a magician than an aesthetician, in a world where magic is real,” Pascal says. “He will identify the slightest detail that will make a look sing and help you sing along with it. He reads your instincts before you have them and knows how to find you in your imagination, then shape a look accordingly.”

The pairing harks back to a more freewheeling time in fashion, when the same muse often spanned a designer’s career. Jean Paul Gaultier and Madonna, Jeremy Scott and Devon Aoki, Karl Lagerfeld and Vanessa Paradis—chances are, there was a dynamic celebrity-designer duo behind many of your favorite red-carpet looks of yore. No one quite nailed the art of elegance like Hubert de Givenchy and Audrey Hepburn. (So closely linked were they that when Hepburn disguised herself in a cleaning lady's uniform in