“She’s one of our last truly legendary movie stars,” Gen Z’s favourite singer Charli XCX tells Vogue by text, having made friends with Kidman after the actress attended one of her shows. (Younger “going-out friends” are a key plank of the womanaissance.) Kidman also admits in the interview that she first learnt the art of reinvention from drag artists. “I used to go to trans clubs,” she says. “I would sit down as a little freckled-faced red-headed girl and they… would do my lashes… put hairpieces on me and… make me beautiful.”
It was the Dior couture gown she wore to the 1997 Oscars — chartreuse, chinoiserie, created by John Galliano — that first put Kidman on the fashion map, aged 29. The doyenne Joan Rivers might have called it “ugly” live on air, yet this was a formative moment, not just for Kidman but for the industry too. This first instance of Paris couture on the red carpet created a pipeline between fashion’s most haute catwalks with Hollywood’s own runway, practically inventing the concept of celebrity as we know it.
