Angelina Jolie’s Sizzling Red Carpet Wardrobe In The ’90s Is The Perfect Antidote To Lockdown

In the age of leggings, loungewear and wearing layers to avoid having the central heating on all day, every day, we’re desperately craving some good old-fashion glamour. The red carpets, the award ceremonies, the premieres – all have migrated to virtual platforms during the pandemic, leaving us hopelessly deprived of the usual drip-feed of gowns to get us through the year’s darkest months with a bit of razzle dazzle. So there’s only one thing for it, a trip down memory lane with this week’s installment of FashBack, featuring the glamour-saturated ‘90s and early ‘00s wardrobe of, drumroll please, Angelina Jolie.

The actor might be known nowadays for tastefully minimal outfits in a palette of pared-back neutrals, but back then? She was master of ceremonies when it came to sizzling red carpet moments. At 1998’s Golden Globe Awards, Jolie played a demure hand with a slip-of-a-thing beaded column dress and a sheer wrap scarf covering her shoulders. That night she won big for Gia, the biopic charting the stratospheric rise and tragic fall of model Gia Carangi, her breakout performance that really got critics sitting up and paying attention. Later that year at the Emmys, she looked a little like a walking statuette, wearing a form-fitting gown the colour of a creamy latte. That’s the slightly surprising thing about her red carpet choices, although her off-duty looks involved a lot of black and leather, her on-duty was Old Hollywood, a love letter to sirens of yesteryear.

The following year was another golden year for Jolie. She won big for Girl, Interrupted, playing the charismatic Lisa Rowe, and her red carpet looks became even more confident. For the Golden Globes, she chose a spangled, glove-like dress in svelte silver sequins, while for the Screen Actors Guild Awards, she appeared with a head of blonde curls and a demure dress in angelic white dress that fanned around her shoulders and pooled at her feet.

For the premiere of Girl, Interrupted, she dialled down the glamour for something slightly more grungy, a floor-sweeping leather skirt which she paired with a lofi-fi jumper and a grey overcoat.

This tallies with what was happening on the red carpet at the moment. While mega-stars tended to wear their finery for award ceremonies, they often wore casual outfits for premieres that gave away much more about their personal style.

Winona Ryder wore louche, oversized tailoring, SJP wore tank dresses and stomper boots, and Lisa Bonet wore velvet kimonos and cowboy boots. At 2000’s Cartier Polo Day, Jolie relied on a tried-and-tested outfit formula: a white button-down shirt, white jeans and her signature aviator sunglasses.

In 2001, she hit the big time once more when she was cast as ultimate action-woman, Lara Croft. Her red carpet persona, once again, shifted to the megawatt end of the spectrum. At the Golden Globes, she wore a strapless and corseted dress that looked like liquid silk, with her long brown hair swept back into a ballerina bun.

It was everything we’d come to want from her wardrobe; simplicity with a big side helping of sex appeal.