A Paco Rabanne arrow-pierced minidress so spikey she could not sit for four hours? No problem. Wearing a flying-saucer size Jacquemus sun hat on the crowded Cannes Film Festival Croisette? Why not? Choosing a red leather Mugler bondage dress for a late night TV interview? Bring it on.
Anya Taylor-Joy has rocked a lot of daring looks on her way to fashion icon status, while being the standard-bearer for classic elegance as a global ambassador for Swiss watchmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre and Christian Dior. But when it comes to her own everyday style, she is just now finding her way.
“If I had told my kid self that I would be somebody who would look up specific Alexander McQueen shows and know all of the history behind them, I wouldn’t have believed it,” she says on an August morning in Los Angeles, with her new, seven-month-old chihuahua named Bartok the Magnificent in her lap.
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“We were supposed to get a Doberman, and we’re still planning on it,” she says, looking down at the floppy-eared love, named in honor of the albino bat sidekick from her favorite childhood film, “Anastasia.” “And here we are.”
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American Gothic
If Taylor-Joy is a bit of a softy, you wouldn’t know it from her on-screen roles.
She entered the pop culture pantheon portraying a steely chess prodigy with winning 1960s style in the 2020 Netflix hit series “The Queen’s Gambit,” nabbing Golden Globe, Screen Actors’ Guild and Critics’ Choice awards for the performance.
In 2022 comedy-horror film “The Menu,” she played the unexpected heroine in a $500 wisteria-colored slipdress by New York City-based luxury lingerie label Fleur du Mal, opposite fellow Jaeger-LeCoultre brand ambassador Nicholas Hoult. Then she went on to helm this year’s post-apocalyptic “Mad Max” prequel “Furiosa” as the kick-ass titular character, and to shake up “Dune: Part Two” with her surprise appearance.
In the midst of all the action, in 2022 she secretly married musician Malcolm McRae with a ceremony of four people in New Orleans, following it up with a bash for family and friends in Venice in 2023.
“There’s something about the American Gothic I’m very attracted to — not only in theme, but in architecture. I love things that look like they’ve been there for a long time and are kind of falling apart, but have real romance to them,” she says of choosing the Big Easy for her nuptials.
Taylor-Joy is an L.A. girl now, but she was born in Miami and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and London. Fashion was never a part of her world back then.
“I wore a lot of the hand-me-downs of my brother and sister, and it was always just something to go outside, ride horses or play in the dirt. So it was very functional for me,” she says of her attire. “And then through the course of working in film, I really fell in love with it, because I could see how instantly my body would react to becoming another character when I finally found their clothes. It really is a sense of power and identity,” she says of how costume has helped her craft.
Her favorite costumes are from “Emma,” the 2020 film based on Jane Austen’s classic of the same name.
“The director Autumn de Wilde is so meticulous visually.…All of the clothes were made on my body, so the designer, Alexandra Byrne, and I became really close, and I would just stand for hours whilst these clothes were created. And they were all created with the idea of what the room setting would be as well. It felt very 360.”
Dressing for red carpets is also about getting into character for the 28-year-old star.
“At first, it was a self-defense mechanism because I found them very overwhelming, and I found that if I made an art piece out of it, I was less anxious,” she says.
She’s made it an art form, particularly this summer with the “Furiosa” press tour, which saw her in a range of warrior-worthy looks projecting her film character’s power into the real world, with striking silhouettes, shoulders and lots of leather and leg, designed by everyone from Rick Owens to Robert Wun.
“I feel like the movie’s not over for me until my stylist, Ryan Hastings, and I have completed what we want the looks for the red carpet to be. That feels like the final thing, because it’s almost a blend of myself and the character, and then I get to let it go,” she says.
Modeling Days
Her first brush with high fashion was actually a brief stint as a model.
At age 17, she was scouted by Storm Management founder Sarah Doukas while walking her dog outside Harrods department store in Knightsbridge, London. Taylor-Joy signed with the agency on the condition that acting would remain her first priority and pursuit.
“I loved showing up to the shoots and looking at all the clothes and figuring out who that girl was,” she says, adding that working with talented designers and artisans as well as being curious fed her interest. “I’m very attracted to people who are passionate. If you’re passionate about taxes, I will sit down and listen to you. So it felt like following a thread. Pun intended.”
Now she’s “fully obsessed” with fashion, and constantly looking at the runways for ideas for press tours, and texting Hastings, with whom she’s been working four years.
“It’s a constant text chain between myself, Ryan, Gregory [Russell] my hairstylist, and Georgie [Eisdell] my makeup artist. We’re all so close, and we’re just like, ‘Have you seen this?’ Or ‘Maybe this can work?’ Sometimes it’s a year in advance we’ll find something and go, ‘This is perfect,’ and then we just start.”
She also keeps a Pinterest board of her favorite looks. “I like that it’s social media you can do [it] on your own,” she says.
“We talk about what we’re trying to embody in terms of the character, in terms of the movie that we’re selling. But part of the reason I love fashion is that there is a fantasy element to it, so I try and create an experience.”
Wearing the spiky archival Paco Rabanne Haute Couture look from spring 1996 at the “Furiosa” premiere in Sydney was certainly an experience.
“We went to the archive in Paris, and they said, ‘No one’s worn this since it walked down the runway.’ And it was just thrilling,” she says. “[The spikes] were actually plastic but you definitely couldn’t sit down. The heaviest part of the dress was the head piece, the architecture of it is incredible. But by the end of the night, I was ready to to have the spikes out of my head.”
Taylor-Joy does love a headpiece though. “I do,” she says. “I think they’re really underutilized.”
A Dior Education
She’s had her share of jaw-dropping Dior looks, too, since being named a global brand ambassador for the French house in 2021, including this year’s Oscars gown, a modern take on the famed Dior Junon and Venus dresses from the fall 1949 collection.
“I love history, so I feel so lucky to be working with a brand where that history is so rich,” she says, adding that she’s gotten to spend quite a bit of time in both the Dior couture and perfume archives. “I’ve read many books on Mr. Dior and how the New Look revolutionized the way the world saw clothes…the silhouette really represented a new era.”
The biggest surprise of her Dior education? “In my head, I always imagine atelier teams to be bigger than they are. I’m always amazed at just how few people it is making these incredible garments and putting in the hours.”
For the “Dune: Part Two” London world premiere, she wore a white gown and hood inspired by a 1961 Marc Bohan for Dior gown that spoke to the mystery of her surprise appearance in the film. For the after party, she removed the sheer white hood to reveal a low-cut maxidress.
“It was difficult because we couldn’t tell them what it was for for the longest time,” she says. “But again, the beauty of working with houses that have such an incredible history is you can really do a deep dive in the archive. And once I knew who my character was, not only who she was in the film as somebody that was quite cloaked, but also who she was going to become, when we saw this wedding dress, it was just an immediate yes. The only thing we really changed was the dress underneath and the original had a bow on the top. That made it a tiny bit more wedding. And we thought we’d show a bit more skin underneath. I just love those moments when Ryan and I are both like, ‘This is it.’ And they let us do it.”
She also tapped Dior for her own blush-toned princess wedding gown worn in Venice, which was thoughtfully and gorgeously embroidered by the atelier’s petits mains with her love story with McCrae, including a hummingbird reaching into a flower for a drink.
“I wanted our love story to be embroidered on the dress. I didn’t want to wear white, I don’t know why, but there’s so much embroidery. You’ve got a little speed boat, because my dad was a world power boat champion when he was younger. And we’ve got things for my husband’s family, coordinates — the whole story. And Maria [Grazia Chiuri] was so sweet about it, just took the time and was so caring, and she knew that the dress wouldn’t be seen. I’ve intentionally not released any pictures of my wedding. So she did it just for love.”
Her relationship with Jaeger-LeCoultre is also personal, and came about through a suggestion from her “Menu” costar Hoult that she’d “really vibe” with the brand.
The Polo Connection
“Talking about history again, most of my family are polo players, and the fact that the [Jaeger-LeCoultre] Reverso watch was conceived as a design to prevent the watch face from being smashed with a polo mallet, is pretty crazy to me.”
Debuted in 1931 with Art Deco lines, the Reverso watch was indeed created to withstand the intensity of polo matches, with a pioneering reversible case that has made it one of the world’s most recognizable watch designs.
“The watch that I wear, it’s very special to me, because I’ve always felt like watches have been a sign of achievement, usually for men, and there was something in me being able to get both my father and I watches,” she says of how the Reverso on her wrist became a different sign of achievement for her. “They’re not exactly matching, but he’s inscribed something on mine, and I’ve inscribed something on his. We went together to see just how it was being made, and the level of care is extraordinary.”
Taylor-Joy’s impressions of time, like most people’s, are complicated. “I do my best to never be more than five minutes late, and I think that’s instilled from ballet and having to be at class exactly when you had to be at class,” she says of her early years studying dance from ages 3 to 15 at a semi-professional ballet school. “I’m also very intense about being on set on time, because I never want to be the reason why something’s being held up. My body has a bit of an internal clock,” she says. “But I do often wish I had more time. I’m trying to figure out how to really milk every second.”
She wishes she had more time in her L.A. home, for one.
“My work life moves so fast that my private life tends to not necessarily catch up. I’ve owned my house for two, three years, and I still haven’t fully unpacked. Everything is just basically livable.”
When it comes to fashion, what’s in between costume and the red carpet experience — her private life day-to-day style — is something she’s just really getting into now.
Finding Her Personal Style
“Because it’s always something that I’ve associated with work, my personal style wasn’t that important to me because I’ve just been constantly working,” she says. “So the only thing I had to think about was what’s going to be comfortable to wear at three o’clock in the morning when I show up to set and then I get changed into something else for the rest of the day. So I wore sweatpants — for years — and just never really thought about it. And now, as I’ve become more obsessed with fashion, I spend a lot of time going to vintage stores because I find that’s more where I find my personal style.”
Like the vintage Jean Paul Gaultier biker jacket, HotPants and Margiela Tabi loafers she wore to the Monaco Grand Prix this summer, for example.
“Recently, it’s become, it’s not a problem yet, but I am very obsessed with vintage Vivienne Westwood. And it’s become a thing where every time I go into a vintage shop and I fall in love with something, it’s Westwood. I’m gonna have an entire wardrobe of exclusively Westwood clothes,” she says, noting Replika in L.A. is her favorite vintage shop source. “It’s like owning a piece of history.”
Her latest discovery? “I bought a very special Mugler piece that makes me very excited.”
For the red carpet or for real life?
“I think it’s for me,” she says. “I just suddenly realized that my friends would ask me out for dinner, and all I had were ball gowns or set clothes. I had nothing in the middle.”
Obviously, though, her red carpet daring is rubbing off.
“I’ve been really enjoying taking the time to say, ‘Maybe I do like wearing this. Maybe I like wearing little red leather gloves.’ That’s fun for me. There’s a glamour to the way people used to dress that I’m very intrigued by.”
This fall, she’ll be around Europe shooting her next film, “Sacrifice,’ directed by Romain Gavras. “He’s such an artist, and I cannot wait to get my hands dirty.” Though she can’t reveal much, she says, “it’s about a very pressing topic.”
Taylor-Joy will also be at the Dior spring 2025 ready-to-wear show in Paris at the end of September. “It’s a trip every time,” she says of the intense crowds outside the runway venues. “I used to be terrified of them. Now I show up with a bit more of an energy.”
And she is casting a curious eye over the changing fashion landscape “to see which designers go where,” she says, sounding like a pro. Would she ever try her hand at it? “I’m not gonna rule it out.”