Zendaya served in more ways than one when she arrived at the world premiere of her latest film, Challengers, in Sydney.
Her green sequined gown featured the shadowed silhouette of a tennis player, racket in hand, readying herself to smash a glittering tennis ball.
It's yet another example of what the 27-year-old's stylist calls "method dressing," where stars are donning increasingly thematic outfits as they take their storytelling beyond the big screen.
Main character energy
In Challengers, Zendaya plays Tashi, a tennis prodigy turned coach who transforms her husband into a grand slam champion.
With that in mind, her global press tour has been a showcase of sporty yet sophisticated cuts, court-side green tones and crisp tennis whites worthy of a place at Wimbledon.
The film's costume designer Jonathan Anderson created this custom gown.
Zendaya paired this glitzy uniform with tennis ball stilettos in Rome.
In London, tennis racket details were paired with Tashi's signature braid.
Promoting the film in Paris took a preppy turn with this checkered coat.
Zendaya looked like a glamorous tennis ball in this silky green suit.
Zendaya embodied her character with this lesson in power dressing.
"We are constantly trying to be inspired by the film," Zendaya told Vogue at the film's premiere in Rome.
"Whether that be literally – like this morning I had tennis balls in my shoes – or more just the essence of the character or a concept or an idea."
It's hardly the first time the actor has channelled her on-screen counterpart on the red carpet.
For the release of sci-fi epic Dune: Part Two earlier this year, Zendaya wore an array of futuristic looks when promoting the film featuring architectural designs, daring cutouts and metallic details.
Vintage Mugler was a show-stopper at the London premiere.
Another couture gown was selected for the New York City premiere.
This archive Givenchy two-piece was worn in Seoul.
This custom Louis Vuitton look was created for the Paris premiere.
In Mexico City, Zendaya wore custom Torishéju for a photo call...
... and custom Bottega Veneta for the premiere.
But one look in particular went viral – the vintage haute couture 'robot' suit designed by Thierry Mugler worn at the film's London premiere.
The cyborg ensemble had been so closely guarded by the fashion house that it hadn't been worn since it first debuted on the Parisian runway in 1995.
The avant-garde creation is not for the faint of heart – Zendaya later revealed she was light-headed within minutes as the metal traps heat – but it became a viral fashion moment instantly.
"We adopted method dressing," Law Roach, Zendaya's longtime stylist, told Vogue during the Dune: Part Two press tour, riffing off the concept of "method acting."
"The looks served as an extension of the wardrobe from the movie; it was intentional and purposeful."
Margot Robbie also epitomised method dressing during her months-long Barbie press tour.
Robbie's stylist, Andrew Mukamal, worked with various designers to curate countess life-sized recreations pulled straight from the iconic doll's wardrobe.
For the London premiere, Margot wore a recreation of 'Enchanted Evening Barbie' from 1960.
Off the red carpet, Margot recreated the 'Totally Hair Barbie' look from 1992.
For another appearance, Margot channelled 'Sparkling Pink Barbie' from 1964.
This Golden Globes look was inspired by 'Superstar Barbie' from 1977.
Another recreated look was this 'Earring Magic Barbie' look from 1992.
At the LA premiere, Margot recreated the 1960 'Solo in the Spotlight Barbie' look.
Liana Rossi, head of culture and influence at advertising agency Ogilvy, says "if you look at that explosion of media coverage that was just about the looks after the film, the proof is in the pudding that there's something that works there."
"I think in terms of getting people's attention now beyond watching a film trailer this seems to be like it'll be a really fruitful territory."
This level of thematic dressing for such extended periods of time wasn't always the case, according to journalist, editor and brand strategist Isabelle Truman.
"Actors used to use awards shows and red carpets as a kind of palette cleanser for future projects, wearing looks that were relatively safe, classic and timeless to avoid being typecast by the industry or the public – which, in turn, impacts jobs they're offered – and appear as a blank canvas ready to be recast," she told ABC News.
"The choice by Margot Robbie and her stylist to instead use the opportunity to further promote the film through fashion during its press run was smart and refreshing, especially after we'd been starved of any red carpet moments, let alone fun and conceptual ones, for so long due to the pandemic."
Robbie was a producer on Barbie, so her ties to the film and its success go deeper than your average lead, Truman adds.
"But I think it's exciting to see Zendaya adopt a similar ethos of dressing on theme."
Former Vogue Australia editor Kirstie Clements says the scale of method dressing encapsulates how the fashion and entertainment industries are "completely intertwined now."
"In a way, the purist idea of fashion from before has been completely hijacked by the entertainment industry. They're completely symbiotic," she told ABC News.
And in Ms Clement's view, "stylists have become celebrities themselves."
From stylist to 'image architect'
Law Roach has been styling Zendaya for years, with the pair first working together when she was a 14-year-old acting on the Disney show Shake It Up.
Fast forward to now and Law Roach boasts more than 1.4 million Instagram followers and refers to himself as an 'image architect' rather than a stylist.
For Ms Clements, stylists finding celebrity status has "been coming for a while and now it's completely kicked off."
"You've got Pharrell [Williams] as the designer of menswear over at Louis Vuitton and he's really a music producer and not trained in fashion design.
"The whole world's become merged."
In Ms Rossi's view, "Law Roach is a genius and image architect is a really brilliant articulation."
"As we look at the kind of images that proliferate culture and the way that celebrities garner our attention increasingly, it's not necessarily new but I think the storytelling through fashion is open to a lot of interpretation," she says.
"It can be really creative, it can be very layered. It has the opportunity to really speak to fandoms but also connect with new audiences, which is what I think makes it so powerful."
With method dressing, "it's a fine line between costume and inspired look," Ms Rossi says, "and I don't know that it's necessarily the worst thing to straddle."
"I think in the context of Barbie you had audiences, myself included, hitting cinemas dressed head to toe in hot pink."
Ms Rossi says the Gentleminions trend – which saw hoards of teenage boys wearing suits to screenings of Minions: The Rise of Gru – is another example of how audiences found a sense of participation in cinema.
"I think fandoms and building cultural moments can be really lucrative for the talent, for the franchise, for the studio network, for the audience, kind of for everyone," she says.
"And it can be quite joyful, which I think is what a lot of people are looking for."
No room for error
For Ms Truman, the trend among celebrities of method dressing "makes fashion fun."
"I also think with actors today having so much more of a voice and perspective anyway, that old-school notion [of dressing as a blank canvas] is kind of redundant," she says.
"Jacob Elordi wearing women's purses isn't going to make him any less likely to portray a hunky man in a blockbuster, for example."
"I do miss the days when stylists weren't as necessary," she adds.
"In the early aughts pre-iPhones when celebrities like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie would dress themselves and be really fun and experimental.
"Today, there's no room for error, which is why it's so essential to get the right stylist who understands intrinsically exactly what they're doing."
Ms Rossi says the SAG-AFTRA strikes that shut down Hollywood for months "really showed us that we need [press tours] in the context of marketing and earning attention in PR for films."
"But broadly speaking, you've got a pretty hard world," she says.
"I think a lot of people are looking for joy and fun."
