Another red carpet, another immaculate Zendaya look.
Though I am sure people like Zelda Fitzgerald and Josephine Baker led glamorous lifestyles in the ’20s, the term “the roaring twenties” has become one of the most unbecoming of the English language. Not least because culture writers thought we’d all exit lockdown and be thrust into a debauched ’20s of our own, but mainly because of the phenomena of prohibition bars, where “in-the-know-drinkers” wear feathered headbands and sip gin and tonics from mismatched chinaware.
I’d suggest that Zendaya’s most recent dress—a spring 2011 Roberto Cavalli number, which Law Roach pulled from the year 2010—is the closest thing culture will have to recreating a true ’20s fantasia. That is because the gown had been constructed with a jungle of fringing, which had, in turn, been suspended from a décolletage neckline. Zendaya wore that reptilian-printed design to the 2024 Green Carpet Fashion Awards last night. (Roach has never met a theme he didn’t immediately commit to.)
The actor was joined on the “red” carpet by the Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate, who authored a 2021 memoir-slash-manifesto titled A Bigger Picture: My Fight To Bring A New African Voice To The Climate Crisis. It’s a big event—and was attended by the likes of Annie Lennox, Donatella Versace, Amber Valletta, Quannah Chasinghorse and Michaela Rodriguez—aimed at encouraging sustainable solutions to the climate crisis. But Nakate’s approach has always been a little more grassroots: “All you need is a marker pen and a placard,” she once told British Vogue. “There is still so much work to be done in platforming, listening and amplifying the voices of activists on the frontlines.”