Black Dresses Were The Biggest Golden Globes 2026 Fashion Trend
- January 12, 2026
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Back in 2018, the Golden Globes red carpet was awash with black dresses as stars, from Emma Stone to Natalie Portman, Meryl Streep to America Ferrera, staged a
Back in 2018, the Golden Globes red carpet was awash with black dresses as stars, from Emma Stone to Natalie Portman, Meryl Streep to America Ferrera, staged a symbolic show of solidarity with victims of sexual harassment as part of the Time’s Up movement. Even more impressive than the visual impact of those inky gowns uniting on the step and repeat? The actors who took activists as their dates, including Emma Watson, who showed up with Marai Larasi, the executive director of Imkaan, and Michelle Williams, who invited Tarana Burke, the founder of the #MeToo movement. By the following year, this discourse had all but disappeared, but jet-black dresses remained. As they always have.
Read more: Golden Globes 2026 Red Carpet
LBDs have been a mainstay of Hollywood style since Coco Chanel debuted the garment in Vogue in 1926 as the definition of “modern”, rather than “mourning”, attire. Dubbed the Ford Model T of fashion, “the frock that all the world would wear”, the black dress was popularised for its democratic quality. And yet, there is nothing ubiquitous about the LBD in Tinseltown, despite the Breakfast at Tiffany’s school of fashion we’ve been fed since Audrey Hepburn and Hubert de Givenchy redefined on-screen glamour in the ’50s. Black is both popular and yet entirely singular in its aesthetic. Black dresses are not, by any means, easy to wear.
A coal-coloured gown, as proven at this year’s Golden Globes, where they were the biggest fashion success story of the night, is not straightforward. It requires immaculate tailoring, for fear of drowning in its depths; tactical beauty, to avoid looking washed out; and enough points of difference to stand out from the other scores of black dresses on the red carpet. Let’s take a look at who nailed it at this year’s ceremony.
Top marks go to Julia Roberts, who played the classic card via Armani Privé, a brand she has looked fab in since her suit-and-tie days. Roberts got a standing ovation in the Beverly Hills Hotel quite simply just for being her (“I’m going to be impossible for at least a week. I appreciate that”), and looked the part with those famous glossy waves tumbling down a long-sleeved black dress featuring a plunging (yet not too plunging) neckline decorated with a strawberry Swarovski necklace. As always with Roberts, there’s a sense of humour that is sometimes absent on LA’s big nights.
Teyana Taylor also brought a certain cheekiness to proceedings, with her typically sculptural Schiaparelli gown featuring a bow-embellished thong. From the front, though, it was a knockout LBD that showed contouring is everything when it comes to a noirish palette. It deserved a moment on the main stage, and got it, when Taylor took home the best supporting actress prize. Schiaparelli’s Daniel Roseberry couldn’t have hoped for better publicity.
Britain’s star designer Dilara Findikoglu, too, must have raised a glass after seeing her dark, otherworldly work get its turn in the spotlight on Jenna Ortega. The high-neck, cut-out gown with exaggerated shoulders and beaded fringing was just a taster of Findikoglu’s fashion storytelling, and looked at home next to the likes of Miley Cyrus, who wore a shiny black sequined Saint Laurent number; Ariana Grande, in her Bridgerton-esque black brocade, courtesy of Vivienne Westwood; Ayo Edebiri in always-exquisite Chanel; and Lisa in a sheer black Jacquemus gown you could imagine her rewearing in the summer.
It was Saja Kilani’s Reema Dahbour gown, though, that explored the deeper meaning a moody palette can afford. “Black is a powerful, strong colour, it shows resilience,” she said of her take on the Palestinian thobe, featuring an element of tatreez – an ancient Palestinian embroidery technique – to evoke the feeling of spiritual protection. “Sometimes fashion says what words cannot – it’s kind of its own language. In the Palestinian heritage, embroidery plays a very key role in preserving memory.” It was the perfect way to honour The Voice of Hind Rajab, Kaouther Ben Hania’s docudrama, following the killing of Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl, by the Israel Defense Forces during the Israeli invasion of Gaza, in which Kilani plays Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) volunteer Rana Faqih. The Jordan-based star had previously felt at odds with attending glitzy red-carpet events considering the ongoing conflict, but wanted to take pride in her work. Like those women standing tall in 2018, sometimes the simplest colour can do all the talking.
