Elle Fanning Credits Big Bird for the Confidence to Wear Cool Fashion at the InStyle Awards
I am wearing Alexander [UNKNOWN] and one secret is that the sequence. See that? You could literally [CROSSTALK] I can literally draw an h for Harry. That is like [UNKNOWN] sketch for dresses contour. [LAUGH] [MUSIC] I'm wearing Victoria Beckham. And I think her secret about it, not even she knows, is that it can be maternity wear. I hope, I'm trying? [LAUGH] I don't know. I think it's very, very delicate. So if one layer kind of comes up, you will see everything. So these layers must stay down. I think the secret is, which is not so secret, is that it's cool. Because it's about 100 degrees right now and global warming's a hoax. What's the secret? I would say that this is a full t-shirt underneath and it's all rigged inside. Marilyn Monroe has always been Like my favorite so I was like, this is the perfect thing to wear her on my body tonight. I have her face cream and face powder. When I was seven years old, my grandmother went to an auction and got that for me. She's always been kind of a fashion icon to me. This dress is from my fall collection, one of my favorite pieces from fall. And I'm wearing it backwards. It's got a lot of boning That I find very nice, very helpful. Kinda sex everything in and pushes everything up. My boots are Fendi, my boots are tight as hell. Hehe. Like literally just squeezing all the life out of my leg. But it looks really pretty. [LAUGH] Ooo, okay. So we're wearing Elie Saab and one secret that you can't tell is that we got ready on set cuz we're filming Grown-ish and we got ready in our trailer. Like 15 minute ago. Yeah, we like rushed off set and got ready in five minutes. Can I tell you a silly secret? Yeah. That it shows up really well on this fun app called kirakira, which make things glittery and it's an already a sparkly dress. So, yeah. [LAUGH] We had fun playing with that.
What makes a woman a certified fashion lover?
Is it designer clothing? Excellent taste? Stylish genes? As we learned at the InStyle Awards 2017, it’s all about confidence.
On Monday night inside Los Angeles’s Getty Center, Elle Fanning took the stage to accept the award for Breakthrough Style Star. Clearly, she’s incredibly deserving of the award considering she arrived in a fantastically sexy Versace dress—straight off the spring 2018 runway—covered with Marilyn Monroe’s face on it.
And while her red carpet look was unarguably memorable, it was her speech that won us over. On stage, Fanning thanked her stylist, Samantha McMillen, along with her mom. But she also thanked one surprising character: Sesame Street’s Big Bird.
“Fashion has been something that’s just always inspired me and been such a big kind of creative outlet for me to be able to tell my story, tell my personality through what I want to wear that day,” Fanning began.
She proceeded to tell the tale of a time in the 7th grade when she chose to experiment with daring fashion. “We had these things called Free Dress Fridays at our school, ‘cause we went to a school that had uniforms,” she told the A-list crowd. “I remember picking out, laying out my clothes down to, like, the right color socks that you would never see, but I knew they were there.”
So what outfit has she never forgotten?
“I bought this Opening Ceremony top that was light pink and it had Big Bird on it, like little Big Birds all over the top, and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna wear this with these bell-bottom jeans and these platform shoes,” she continued.
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“I went to school and I was brutally made fun of,” she said, explaining that she considered changing her style after her classmates didn’t approve. The results? She said changing her look didn’t make her feel like herself, so she hasn’t since, crediting the evening’s Versace number as a risk-taking dress.
“I pushed it. We’re going for it! Thank you for that,” she said. “Now, thanks to Big Bird and to Samantha and to InStyle and my mom…[this] is dedicated to all those high school kids.”
Talk about coming full circle.
—with reporting by Kim Peiffer
