How Rosamund Pike found her true English eccentric red carpet style
It's a far cry from her red carpet style at the beginning of her career. Take the 2005 London premiere of her breakout film role as Jane Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, for example. Opting for a Grecian-style draped midi dress, complete with waist-cinching silver belt and matching open-toe strappy heels, she could have been any other starlet walking in off the street. Pretty and chic, yes. But stylish? Not really.
How times have changed. Fast-forward two decades and the actress, arguably at the height of her powers post- Saltburn (current projects include Amazon Prime's hit The Wheel of Time, the new Guy Ritchie film Wife and Dog, and her first appearance on the West End stage in a new Suzie Miller play) has become one of a handful of quintessentially posh and eccentric English dressers, alongside the likes of her peers Helena Bonham Carter and Tilda Swinton.
While throughout the Noughties she largely played it safe, in recent years, she's become far more adventurous with her fashion. In the past 12 months in particular she's been spotted wearing a roll-call of our coolest designers. In November, she opted for a punkish pale-blue and silver foil mini dress from Rabanne, while a few months later, she switched things up in a tuxedo-style dress from Huishan Zhang with embellishment detail.
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She's also shown a particular fondness for Simone Rocha, wearing a nude-coloured pleated gown from the designer's spring/summer 2024 collection last month, as well as a bright red dress with silver padlock detail from her autumn/winter 2025 collection a few weeks later. On both occasions she wore the designer's Marmite fluffy heels – a conversation-starter, if not entirely everyone's cup of tea.
And the love-in is mutual: designers want her to wear their designs. 'I think Rosamund Pike has an incredible sense of style,' says the Kazakh designer Meruert Tolegen, whose pieces she has worn in the past. 'I love that she can be sophisticated and daring at the same time. I was thrilled to see her in one of the dresses from my fall/winter 2024 collection. She looked absolutely stunning in it.'
But it's not just the hipster labels that Pike has been turning to, she's also been championing more established household names, like Erdem, Chloé and Dior. In fact, what makes her standout is that she doesn't play it safe when she does wear these classic brands – instead, she takes risks. Case in point, the cropped paisley jacket and long shorts she wore from Chloé on CBS This Morning: no floaty, ingénue dresses for her. Similarly, when she wore Dior in February, she chose to be suited and booted, rather than in an LBD.
Fashion expert Bronwyn Cosgrave can trace Pike's fashion-forwardness back to 2002, when she appeared in a backless Jenny Packham dress at the premiere of Die Another Day, yet it was her press tour for A Private War in 2018 that really caught her attention. 'She wore this very dramatic, black Givenchy look,' she says. 'And she just had such star quality, she's like a Vanessa Redgrave, she's drop dead gorgeous and a proper thespian.'
It was when Pike started working with the stylist Leith Clark, whose other clients include Parker Posey, Lucy Boynton and Keira Knightley, that her sartorial potential was fully realised, posits Cosgrave. 'Leith has this ability to create the sophisticated cool girl,' she explains. 'Rosamund needed someone to shake her out of Jenny Packham, she needed to take a risk, and it was brave. It's certainly paid off.'
For Clark, it was a natural transition from being friends to working together due to their shared sensibility. 'We have known each other for more than 20 years but only started working together a year and a half ago with Saltburn,' says Clark. 'Working together is pure joy. I feel like it's a constant celebration of her, of her work. And I feel like we get to present in a public space in a completely authentic way.'
In terms of their approach to red carpets, it's all about authenticity. 'It has to feel and look like her,' she explains. 'That part is instinctual. We also think about what project she's promoting... For example, we started together on Saltburn and definitely wanted to honour her character Elspeth, so in fittings always invited Elspeth in, and thought about her. It isn't like that for each project, sometimes it's more genre based, or a mood, or a feeling.'
Pike has more projects in the works which means more red carpet appearances on the horizon – long may her partnership with Clark continue.
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