Venice Delivered a Red Carpet Built on Black, and Kendall Jenner Wore a Dress From 1995

The 83rd Venice Film Festival assembled the usual crowd on the Lido, across premieres, screenings and the surrounding events, and the dressing was notably more disciplined than the season usually produces.

The dominant choice was black, and the interesting variations were all within it.

The archival moment

The single best look belonged to Kendall Jenner, making her Venice red carpet debut.

She wore an archival Giorgio Armani gown from the designer's autumn 1995 collection, gold and embroidered, with Briony Raymond jewellery and Aquazzura heels, for the Wild Horse Nine premiere.

Archival dressing has become the most reliable way to stand out on a carpet where everyone else is wearing something from the current season, and a thirty-year-old Armani is about as strong a version of the move as exists. It is also a considerably harder thing to source than a loan from a current collection.

A thirty-year-old Armani is the strongest version of the archival move

The black gowns

Laura Dern wore Dior lace embellished with crystals, also for Wild Horse Nine on September 3. She had presented George Clooney, a longtime friend, with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the opening ceremony the day before.

Maggie Gyllenhaal, president of this year's main competition jury, wore Balenciaga with a voluminous skirt, a one-shoulder silhouette and statement puffed sleeves, attending the screening of 15/18, A Place to Heal, on September 4.

The jury president has a particular problem at a festival: appearing authoritative without appearing to have opinions about the films. A dramatic black gown with architectural sleeves solves it about as neatly as clothing can.

Kate Mara and Rooney Mara coordinated in black, marking a career first together.

The two who declined the gown

The more interesting decisions came from the people who did not wear one.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge skipped the traditional red carpet dress entirely, appearing in black-and-white Celine for the Wild Horse Nine premiere on September 3: tailored black trousers with a flowing white cape-style top.

That is a harder look to carry on a carpet built for gowns, and it works because it is not trying to compete on the same terms. Trousers at a film festival premiere read as a statement about the wearer's relationship to the occasion rather than about fashion.

John Malkovich did something similar with black tie, wearing a loose-fitting Dior suit with an off-white silk shirt and a dramatic ruffled collar. He was in Venice for Wild Horse Nine, in which he stars alongside Sam Rockwell.

A ruffled collar with a loose suit is the kind of thing that should not work and does, largely because it is worn without any apparent awareness that it might not.

What the week looked like

Strip it back and the shape is clear enough.

A festival carpet is usually an argument between houses, conducted through whoever is currently contracted to them. Venice this year read more like a set of individual decisions: an archival gown, a jury president in armour, two people in trousers and a suit, and a run of black that made the one gold dress impossible to miss.

Which is, on the whole, a better week for looking at than a parade of current-season gowns would have been.