a day ago
Why Leonardo DiCaprio's girlfriend wore a dress last seen on his ex in 2003
In a world where anyone with enough money can look good, it is rare, 'archive' fashion pieces that have become a real style flex.
So hand it to Vittoria Ceretti, the 27-year-old Italian supermodel girlfriend of Leonardo DiCaprio, who wore a pale blue Dolce & Gabbana gown from the autumn/winter 2004 collection to the post-wedding celebration for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his new wife Lauren Sanchez Bezos.
The catch? It was last worn by Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen in 2003 to the Met Gala, back when she was DiCaprio's girlfriend.
It's unlikely that Ceretti cares about this inconvenience. The pros of wearing archival fashion far outweigh the cons. Wearing a rare catwalk piece conveys taste and a knowledge of fashion that is harder to achieve with a new garment. It has a story and a history, and for someone who wants to be taken seriously as a style tastemaker, there's great value in that. The term 'archive' is a looser adjective than 'vintage', which refers to goods that are more than 20 years old, but it also speaks to something with status; a high-end, limited-edition, catwalk item that is as collectable as fine art.
Naturally, celebrities like Ceretti aren't spending their free time scouring vintage stores in the hope of finding a hidden gem. In fact, it's usually a stylist helping them craft an image and aesthetic identity, advising them what to wear when – this investment pays off when they land a lucrative ambassador role for a high fashion or jewellery house.
Gill Linton, the Paris-based chief executive and editor-in-chief of Byronesque, a platform that sources and documents archival fashion, is more cynical. 'What they think they are saying by wearing archival pieces is that they are authentic and creative,' she tells The Telegraph. 'What they are actually saying, in this context, is that they are above contemporary collections and haute couture.'
Linton is part of a growing industry of sourcers and vintage dealers whose closely-guarded networks help them unearth these treasures. They'll be commissioned by celebrities' stylists to find specific pieces that they know will have an impact on the red carpet. 'Something scarce from fashion history is a different kind of bragging right that the internet can get involved in with old runway and editorial images,' she says. 'The clothes are celebrities in their own right, to make people seem more authentic than they actually are.'
Take Naomi Campbell at Cannes last year. Working with stylist Law Roach, she wore a vintage Chanel couture dress that she herself had modelled on the catwalk in 1996. Then there was Jennifer Lawrence, who wore a vintage Givenchy lace gown to the Vanity Fair Oscars after-party that Kate Moss had worn on the catwalk in 1996. Or how about Sabrina Carpenter, who wore a Bob Mackie dress that Madonna wore to the Oscars in 1991 – the gown was originally inspired by Marilyn Monroe's look in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Lady Gaga, Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Scarlett Johansson are also among the celebrities to have worn archive fashion on the red carpet.
This list doesn't even touch on the many celebrities wearing new couture creations that are based on archive pieces that are too fragile to actually wear – perhaps that would have been a better course of action for Ceretti, who later shared the rips in her dress on her Instagram stories – or indeed Kim Kardashian, who made headlines in 2022 for risking the delicate stitching of a £4 million Bob Mackie gown that had been worn by Marilyn Monroe, by wearing it to the Met Gala.
For her part, Ceretti's clearly into archival fashion. On Thursday, she was spotted in the streets of Venice wearing a 1990s Betsey Johnson dress.
Nor was she the only one to have worn archive to the Bezos wedding celebrations. Kylie and Kendall Jenner both wore Roberto Cavalli archive to the pre-wedding party, and the bride herself wore a 2003 Alexander McQueen dress for dinner on Wednesday night before the celebrations kicked off.
Safe to say, the phrase, 'This old thing?' is out of style. Instead, the fashion savvy answer to a compliment is: 'Thanks, it's archive.'
