The best-dressed stars at the 2026 Critics Choice Awards wanted to start the trophy circuit fresh. For the January 4 red carpet, held at Santa Monica's Barker Hangar, nominees and guests weren't content with the awards season style regulars: cupcake-shaped ballgowns, tributes to Old Hollywood, trips to a long-lost vintage collection, and so on. Instead, nominees from the year's buzziest movies (Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another) and TV shows (The Pitt, Severance, Shrinking) experimented with red-carpet suiting and new-to-them dress styles. Some genres of gowns and matching sets had been seen before these Critics Choice Awards, it's true. However, they found new life on a crop of rising talents.
Repeat attendees like Elle Fanning and Ariana Grande considered the 2026 Critics Choice Awards their chances to branch out. Fanning and stylist Samantha McMillen took an unexpected trip to an early aughts Ralph Lauren runway. Grande and Roach, meanwhile, found new dimensions for Glinda the Good-inspired pink. Then there were the debut attendees who made a strong first impression: Sorry, Baby star Eva Victor in a chicly understated Ferragamo suit; Chase Infiniti in boundary-pushing Louis Vuitton; Hamnet's Jessie Buckley in next-gen Dior.
