At the 96th Academy Awards, held on 10 March 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, German actor Sandra Hüller arrived as the defining face of the year’s international cinema. Hüller represented two of the evening’s most critically acclaimed European co-productions: Justine Triet’s French courtroom thriller Anatomy of a Fall and Jonathan Glazer’s German-language Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest. Anatomy of a Fall, which had previously secured the Palme d’Or at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, earned five Academy Award nominations, including a Best Actress nod for Hüller’s portrayal of the fiercely ambiguous author Sandra Voyter. The film ultimately won Best Original Screenplay. Concurrently, The Zone of Interest, adapted from Martin Amis’s 2014 novel, secured five nominations and won Best International Feature and Best Sound for its chilling depiction of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig, played by Hüller. Navigating the global press circuit for two tonally severe, historically weighty narratives required a red carpet strategy that separated the actor from her austere on-screen personas. To achieve this at the season’s culminating event, Hüller collaborated with the French heritage house Schiaparelli, selecting a custom Haute Couture gown that operated as a piece of rigid structural engineering.
Under the creative direction of Texan-born designer Daniel Roseberry, who assumed control of the Maison in 2019, Schiaparelli has dominated recent red carpets through a revival of the founder Elsa Schiaparelli’s 1930s surrealist codes. For the 2024 Oscars ceremony, Roseberry constructed a custom sheath dress for Hüller cut from heavy, light-absorbing black stretch velvet. The garment’s architectural focal point was a vertiginous, off-the-shoulder neckline that extended outward in sculptural, padded wings, framing the actor’s face and clavicle. This aerodynamic wing motif required an internal corseted bustier to maintain its rigid, gravity-defying shape against the stretch velvet of the skirt.
Anchoring the centre of this exaggerated neckline was Schiaparelli’s signature padlock motif. Originally introduced by Elsa Schiaparelli in the 1930s – often utilised on the fastening of handbags and tailored jackets as a nod to securing secrets – the padlock has been upscaled by Roseberry into a prominent structural hardware element. For Hüller’s gown, the padlock detail was cast in gilded hammered brass, providing a harsh metallic contrast against the matte black velvet. The brass surface was further embellished with intricate crystal embroidery, catching the flashbulbs of the Dolby Theatre press line. This integration of severe structural elements with traditional haute couture fabrication aligns with the broader movement towards wearable sculpture, a trend frequently highlighted during industry showcases such as Unveiling the Unconventional: A Glimpse into New York Fashion Week. By opting for this specific silhouette, Hüller rejected the traditional sequined column gowns typical of Academy Award nominees, instead aligning herself with the Parisian avant-garde.
The precision of the Schiaparelli gown necessitated equally deliberate styling choices. Los Angeles-based stylist Jordan Johnson Chung, who curated Hüller’s wardrobe throughout the 2024 awards season, opted for a minimalist approach to accessorising, allowing the brass padlock to dictate the look’s primary metallic tone. However, Chung introduced a high-wattage diamond element via French luxury jeweller Cartier. Hüller wore the “Reflection de Cartier” necklace, a high jewellery piece crafted from 18-karat white gold. The necklace is set with exactly 392 diamonds, utilising a mixture of brilliant-cut and baguette-cut stones. The geometric arrangement of the baguette diamonds echoed the sharp, linear construction of the Schiaparelli gown’s winged neckline.
Hüller’s beauty team maintained the “quiet luxury” aesthetic that characterised her entire promotional tour. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a severe, sleek knot with a precise centre parting, exposing her neck and shoulders to maximise the visual impact of the gown’s silhouette. The makeup was similarly restrained, focusing on a luminous complexion, brushed-up eyebrows, and a muted, neutral lip colour. This stark, clean presentation provided a neutral canvas for the heavy velvet and diamond hardware, ensuring the styling never overwhelmed the wearer.
Hüller’s hyper-polished Oscar night presentation stood in stark contrast to the utilitarian and historically oppressive costuming of her two nominated films. In Anatomy of a Fall, costume designer Valentine Breton des Loys dressed Hüller’s character, Sandra Voyter, in practical, oversized knitwear, heavy denim, and unconstructed blazers. Voyter’s wardrobe was designed to reflect the cold, isolated environment of the French Alps and to project an image of unvarnished, slightly defensive intellect during the grueling courtroom sequences. The clothing was intentionally devoid of glamour, functioning as armour for a woman subjected to relentless public dissection of her marriage.
Conversely, in The Zone of Interest, Polish costume designer Małgorzata Karpiuk was tasked with recreating the domestic wardrobe of Hedwig Höss in 1943. Karpiuk utilised authentic period patterns and sourced original fabrics to construct the dirndls, aprons, and conservative daywear worn by the commandant’s wife. The film’s harrowing subtext is frequently communicated through clothing, notably in a sequence where Hedwig tries on a confiscated fur coat stripped from a Jewish woman murdered in the adjacent camp. The banality of Hedwig’s domestic wardrobe amplifies the horror of the genocide occurring just over the garden wall. As these films toured the global circuit, drawing intense critical analysis at events such as the 67th BFI London Film Festival, Hüller’s public appearances required a distinct separation from these weighty narratives. The Schiaparelli commission achieved exactly this, replacing the heavy wools of the Alps and the historically stained garments of 1940s Poland with the highest echelon of contemporary Parisian craftsmanship.
Following the conclusion of the three-and-a-half-hour ceremony, the Hollywood establishment migrated to the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills for the annual Vanity Fair Oscar Party. For this secondary event, Hüller and Chung executed a wardrobe change that maintained the Schiaparelli Haute Couture narrative while shifting the colour palette entirely.
Hüller arrived at the Vanity Fair blue carpet in a second custom Schiaparelli creation. This gown abandoned the black stretch velvet in favour of a highly reflective, butter-coloured shiny velvet. While it retained the body-skimming sheath silhouette of the primary dress, the neckline was drastically altered. The afterparty gown featured an extreme plastron neckline – a stiffened, decorative panel covering the chest, historically derived from military armour. Roseberry embroidered this plastron heavily with Schiaparelli’s house codes, integrating rhinestones, gold thread, and tonal sequins. The resulting garment was lighter in hue but heavier in surface embellishment, allowing Hüller to navigate the densely packed, highly photographed Vanity Fair party with a renewed visual focal point.
Sandra Hüller’s presence at the 2024 Academy Awards effectively consolidated her status as a premier force in international cinema and a formidable new figure in high fashion. By securing two distinct, custom Haute Couture commissions from Daniel Roseberry’s Schiaparelli, she demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of red carpet mechanics. The architectural black velvet and the embellished butter-coloured plastron gown provided a masterclass in stark, structural elegance, completely divorcing the actor from the harrowing realities of Sandra Voyter and Hedwig Höss. Through precise tailoring, historical house codes, and Cartier diamonds, Hüller’s 2024 Oscar night remains a benchmark for conceptually rigorous red carpet dressing.
