Elizabeth Olsen’s 2017 Ingrid Goes West Press Tour Pioneered “Method Dressing” years Before Zendaya’s Viral Moments
Before Zendaya’s show-stopping Dune and Challengers looks cemented “method dressing” as a red carpet phenomenon, Elizabeth Olsen quietly laid the groundwork with a strikingly committed promotional strategy for her 2017 film, Ingrid Goes West.Olsen, alongside co-star Aubrey Plaza, mirrored the film’s themes of obsession and identity through their coordinated and character-inspired outfits, a practice now gaining widespread recognition.
The trend, recently highlighted by Olsen herself in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, involves celebrities aligning their public fashion choices with the roles they’re promoting. While Zendaya’s 2017-present looks – including a ringmaster-inspired outfit for the Greatest Showman and a C-3PO-esque ensemble for Dune – brought the concept into the mainstream, Olsen and Plaza’s 2017 approach demonstrated an early, nuanced understanding of the power of sartorial storytelling. Their coordinated looks for Ingrid Goes West press events, frequently enough featuring similar color palettes and styles to the film’s protagonist, Ingrid, foreshadowed the now-ubiquitous practice of celebrities embodying their characters through fashion.
For Ingrid Goes West, Olsen and Plaza consistently adopted a minimalist, often pastel-toned aesthetic reminiscent of Ingrid’s (Olsen) attempts to emulate the curated online persona of Taylor Sloane (Plaza). Photos from the press tour reveal Olsen frequently wearing simple dresses and understated accessories,mirroring Ingrid’s attempts at appearing effortlessly stylish. Plaza, meanwhile, often sported outfits that reflected Taylor’s influencer aesthetic – polished, trendy, and carefully constructed.
“We definitely talked about it,” Olsen told Harper’s Bazaar. “Aubrey and I were like, ‘Let’s just lean into the discomfort of this film and how it feels to be someone who’s trying so hard to be someone else.'”
the practice has since exploded in popularity, with Megan Fox recently wearing a bloodied corset referencing an alternate ending to Jennifer’s Body and the rise of “Barbiecore” inspired by the Barbie movie. As celebrities continue to push the boundaries of red carpet expression, Olsen’s 2017 experiment serves as a foundational moment in the evolution of method dressing, proving its potential long before it became a viral trend.
