Bras—you might have heard of them—are now an appropriate thing to wear on the red carpet. It’s been a thing for quite a while (see Gwen Stefani at the 1998 VMAs and Dua Lipa at the O2 Silver Clef Awards in 2019), but it gained new momentum at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
There, Sydney Sweeney wore a Miu Miu negligée that had been cut to reveal at least 75% of a pale blue bra beneath; Scarlett Johansson wore a Prada gown with a visible spaghetti-strapped brassiere; and Cindy Bruna wore a polka-dot Vivienne Westwood dress that exposed two semicircles of a corset.
But what started as a subtle peekaboo moment is now a little more full-on. Back in October, Ana de Armas arrived at Louis Vuitton’s spring-summer 2024 show with her brocade shirt left wide open, revealing a satin bra beneath.
And then Emma Watson—who is traditionally more of a conservative dresser—appeared at the We Dare to Dream premiere in London dressed in an embellished Alexander McQueen pantsuit with nothing but a crisscross bralette underneath.
But it was Sharon Stone who took this trend to its extreme: draped in a fuchsia Tony Ward dress that hung from the straps of a crystalline brassiere with an attitude of deliberate deshabillé at the Red Sea Film Festival on Thursday evening.
Of course, Stone is no stranger to making these kinds of flirtatious statements. This is a woman who found fame as one of Hollywood’s foremost femme fatales: all slingback heels and miniskirts in Basic Instinct, sheathlike columns and come-hither stoles in Casino.
Even three decades on, Sharon Stone’s public persona remains cloaked in all this feminine mystique. Even at—gasp!—65 years of age. And even when—gasp!—her hair is silvering.
This story was first published in British Vogue.
