Fashion Critical: From the Oscars to the Met Gala, these are the red carpets to watch

2 days ago 2

By Fashion Critical

October 5, 2025 — 5.00am

Gather around, my little squirrels, as we inspect the calendar of key red-carpet events to look forward to each year. I’ve narrowed it down to only the core ones. Just as the ancients used the sun, moon and stars to track the passage of time, so do the key red-carpet events serve as my cosmic calendar. My North Stars, if you will.

Getting married on the day of the Oscars? It’s a no from me. I’ll be sharpening my talons. Need me to sweep the streets after a major ticker-tape parade for the mayor of Gundagai’s birthday on the first Monday in May? Apologies, I’ve come down with a hideous flu and will be logging a sick day. Sarah Jessica Parker wishes to take me shopping but it’s Logies night? I’m terribly sorry – please tell her I’ve had to duck off on urgent business. I’m as bound to these events as the Kardashians are to contouring. Let us dive in.

Ayo Edebiri, 2025 Golden Globes; Cardi B, 2025 Grammys; Ariana Grande, 2025 Oscars.

January: The Golden Globes (aka Hollywood’s boozy Oscars rehearsal)

Ah, the Globes … the slightly more relaxed, cooler cousin of the Oscars. It’s the perfect kick-off to a new calendar year, where Hollywood’s elite gather to celebrate their achievements across both film and TV, and squeeze into frocks tighter than Lenny Kravitz’s pants.

Unlike the Oscars, which demand a certain level of staid, old-school glamour, the Golden Globes allow the celebs to get a little more playful with their red-carpet looks. Typically held at the Beverly Hilton in LA’s Beverly Hills, the Golden Globes might previously have revealed frightening fashion blunders – see Lara Flynn Boyle’s meth ballerina from 2003 – but these days, with style squads larger than a small village, celebs are far less likely to set a foot out of line.

February: The Grammys

Imagine a red carpet, but very drunk. The Grammys, usually held in Los Angeles, honour excellence in the recording industry across various musical genres, which results in a sometimes worrying display of chaotic couture, with no discernible dress code visible to the naked eye. You can expect enormous amounts of skin on show and “aw, hell no” moments that keep us LOL-ing for days. This is rock ‘n’ roll, darlings. Nothing is off limits. When it works, it works, and when it doesn’t, it is very, very bad.

Gal Gadot, 2025 Oscars; Kim Kardashian, 2019 Met Gala; Sarah Jessica Parker, 2006 Met Gala.

March: The Academy Awards

While the Oscars are supposedly about honouring cinematic excellence, the reality is they’re more widely recognised for being the Grand Poobah of red carpets. Held at the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, this event boasts the crème de la crème of celebrity red-carpetry, for which stylists plan for eleventeen months and years.

Of all the red carpets I critique, however, I am often left wanting after the Oscars – largely because these days it’s almost impossible to spot someone looking hideous as the looks err on the conservative side. How I long for the days of Björk’s crazy ol’ swan dress. Of Gwyneth’s worrying pink taffeta, in which she wailed while accepting the best actress gong. But alas, these days, finding fault with a celeb’s couture at the Oscars is tougher than a chicken schnitty at the Gundagai RSL.

May: The Met Gala

The Met Gala, held on the first Monday in May, is without question the greatest and most exclusive fashion extravaganza of the year. It’s where fashion, art and pop culture collide.

The Met Gala is technically an annual fundraising event for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York City, but it could be more accurately described as the day when celebs and designers try to out-weird each other with couture more bonkers and bedazzling than Elton John’s underwear drawer. If you need proof, one time Katy Perry dressed as a chandelier, and Jared Leto arrived carrying a decapitated replica of his head.

While tickets can cost upwards of $US75,000 ($112,000) per person, celebs cannot simply buy their way in. The guest list is heavily curated and approved by Fashion Jesus, aka Anna Wintour, who has chaired the event for the past three decades.

Jared Leto, 2023 Met Gala; Chloë Sevigny, 2019 Cannes; Coco Rocha, 2025 Cannes.

Each year, the theme corresponds to the Costume Institute’s latest exhibition. While some attendees stick to looking reasonably normal, to achieve sartorial success at the Met Gala is to wear something either wildly extravagant, unconventional or attention-grabbing that is categorically in keeping with the theme. As a fun twist, the dress code is usually written as a confusing cryptic riddle, solvable only by NASA astrophysicists and CIA agents. And if you get it wrong, you risk death by firing squad or a dirty look from Anna Wintour – whichever you find more terrifying.

Getting and staying on the Met Gala guest list is like surviving the Hunger Games: you must be chosen as the strongest contender from your district (industry), ally with the most powerful Capitol stylists and designers, avoid being taken out by your competitors in a dazzling arena of sequins and silk, and keep the Capitol (aka Anna Wintour) entertained year after year.

Cannes Film Festival

Here, European elegance meets old-world Hollywood glamour on the French Riviera. Oui, oui! The fashion at Cannes is always a mesmerising mix of timeless sophistication and extreme style. This is the only red carpet where you can wear a frock that takes up 50 to 60 square metres of space. It is the place where every photographer must wear a tuxedo and where celebs will serve up a mix of gorgeous day and night looks as they flit between press calls and the nightly red carpets.

Jenna Ortega, 2025 Emmys; Megan Stalter, 2025 Emmys; Sabrina Carpenter, 2025 VMAs.

September: The Emmys

The Emmys are the TV world’s Oscars, and while once considered the poor cousin, now you see just as many movie stars at the Emmys as you do at the Academy Awards. Once upon a time, if you were a film actor, taking a spot on a TV series was akin to career suicide. Likewise, if you’d made it in TV, you weren’t considered the “real deal” until you’d proved you could sell films. These days, with more streaming services than you can poke Keith Urban’s GHD at (watch out, that thing is HOT), there are just as many iconic A-listers at the Emmys as at the Oscars.

MTV Video Music Awards (aka the VMAs or Very Much Apeshit)

Throw out everything you’ve ever learned about FARSHUN because this is the most unhinged, chaotic red carpet of the year. Good luck working out the dress code. If I had to summarise it, imagine every stylist has gone on leave, and in their place they’ve hired a series of rabid raccoons on ayahuasca to choose their clients’ outfits. The result is a batshit-crazy fever dream you wouldn’t be able to explain to anyone, even if your life was at stake.

When it comes to the red-carpet looks, there are literally no rules. Latex, chain mail, shredded rags and scraps from the Spotlight wheelie bin are welcome. Let the Janome run wild and free. Or simply pop your fabric in the paper shredder and you’ll likely come up with something far better than your contemporaries. Of course, there are always a couple of confused musos who turn up looking rather nice, but they are in the minority in this dumpster fire of fashion mayhem.

Edited extract from Fashion Critical: Red Carpet Lewks and LOLs from an Undercover Fashion Critic (Murdoch Books), out October 14.

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