Awards Season 2025-2026: The Return of Armor and the Rise of Undone Glamour
- The Gala Girl
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
What this Awards season is really about
Awards season has always reflected more than fashion. It mirrors cultural mood, power dynamics, and how women choose to occupy public space. This season, that mirror is unusually clear.
Awards Season 2025-2026 is shaping up as a study in contrast: high-shine futurism and armor-like glamour on the red carpet, followed by slinkier, undone sensuality once the night loosens its grip.
This isn’t aesthetic confusion. It’s intention.
The Red Carpet as Modern Armor
One of the clearest signals this awards season is the return of structure as power.
Strong, sculpted shoulders - sharp, exaggerated, and often architectural - have reasserted themselves across the Fall/Winter 2025–2026 runways. Designers including Saint Laurent, Stella McCartney, Givenchy, and Balenciaga leaned heavily into broad shoulders not just in tailoring, but in gowns, coats, and evening silhouettes.
This wasn’t subtle.
And it wasn’t accidental.
That runway dominance has already translated to the red carpet. At recent high-profile events, including the 2025 Golden Globes, pronounced and caped shoulders appeared repeatedly, worn by figures like Cate Blanchett, whose styling consistently telegraphs what formal dressing is becoming rather than what it has been. Elsewhere, figures such as Emily Ratajkowski at the 2025 Fashion Awards reinforced the idea that shoulder emphasis is no longer niche, it’s central.
The appeal of the power shoulder right now is obvious. It creates immediate authority in photographs. It frames the body as deliberate and composed. It pushes back against the soft, pared-down minimalism that defined the height of “quiet luxury.”
Fashion is swinging decisively toward maximalism, and the shoulder is its clearest architectural expression.
Metallics: From Accent to Statement
If structure is the silhouette story of this season, metallics are its surface language.
Shimmering fabrics have been building momentum for several awards cycles, but Fall/Winter 2025–2026 confirms that they are no longer a flourish—they are foundational. Designers such as Dior, Alexander McQueen, and Fendi are treating metallics not as costume, but as core materials, working them into tailoring, knitwear, and eveningwear with confidence.
Recent red carpets validated that shift. At the 2025 Golden Globes and Oscars, figures including Demi Moore, Halle Berry, Mindy Kaling, and Nicole Kidman embraced high-shine gowns that read polished rather than theatrical. These weren’t novelty moments; they were controlled, modern uses of light and texture.
What makes metallics particularly potent right now is their versatility. They appear as liquid silver columns, molten gold armor, dense crystal paillettes that photograph like mirrored glass, and softer champagne tones that feel luminous rather than loud.
This is metallic dressing with intention—designed for movement, photography, and presence.
Sheer Without Fragility
Sheer dressing hasn’t disappeared, but it has matured.
Rather than overt exposure, this season favors diaphanous layers used with structure such as tulle over bodysuits, chiffon layered atop corsetry, beaded netting that reveals architecture rather than skin. The result is sensual without being vulnerable, intimate without feeling exposed.
This balance matters. In a season defined by power dressing, even softness is controlled.
After Midnight: The Release
Once the ceremony ends, the aesthetic loosens, sometimes dramatically.
After-parties tell a different story: micro hemlines paired with towering platforms, bias-cut slip dresses in metallics or lace, tuxedo jackets thrown casually over fragile gowns. Some women will inevitably trade stilettos for decorated flats or fashion sneakers, keeping them on for the cameras as a quiet rejection of performative discomfort.
These looks aren’t about shock. They’re about ease.
The contrast between red carpet armor and after-party intimacy defines the rhythm of this season. Power is asserted early. Personality emerges later.
What This Season Is Really About
What unites sculpted shoulders, metallic surfaces, sheer structure, and undone after-dark dressing is not trend for trend’s sake, but agency.
Awards season 2025 isn’t asking women to choose between strength and softness, control and sensuality, spectacle and ease.
It’s allowing them to move between those states freely.
That flexibility - armor when required, release when earned -
is the true signature of this awards season.
And it’s only just beginning.
Warmly,
Edie Ellis
The Gala Girl
PS: The photo above is from the HCA/ASTRA Awards in 2023, where I wore a Monique Lhuillier metallic gown—an intentional choice that mirrors many of the red carpet trends unfolding now. I’ll be covering the ASTRA Awards on January 9, 2026, where we’ll see how these predictions hold up in real time.
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