Jennifer Aniston arrived at the Golden Globes sporting the same haircut she had when she played Rachel Green, in the earliest years of Friends. It stopped many star-gazers dead in their tracks, because the public record is quite clear on this: Aniston hated that look, thinking it was ugly. But she dusted it off anyway, as a gift of cultural nostalgia, a portal back to an innocent time, when Matthew Perry was still alive and young people could afford to pay rent, and the world was full of promise – and, for a girl with the right highlights, nothing could stand in her way. If Aniston can alter this little, after this much time, maybe nothing is as different as it feels?
But the more powerful hit of times past came from Gillian Anderson’s dress: it looked elegant, unremarkable, maybe a little bridal, even. Nothing to see here, just a fine-looking woman in white. Look closer, and you’ll see it’s embroidered; closer still, that the pattern is like nothing you’ve seen before. She called it her vagina dress, which was very on-brand, given her role as the sex therapist mum in Sex Education, yet at the same time very off-brand, because those are actually vulvas.
