Great Outfits in Fashion History: Sabrina Carpenter in Céline

Another incredible (and rare) Phoebe Philo moment on the red carpet.

There are perfectly good celebrity style moments, and then there are the looks that really stick with you, the ones you try desperately to recreate at home. In ‘Great Outfits in Fashion History,’ Fashionista editors are revisiting their all-time favorite lewks.

I have long, long been a fan of Sabrina Carpenter’s style and her ongoing collaboration with stylist Jason Bolden. The first time I realized they were doing something truly special — and exciting — was at the 2017 Billboard Women in Music celebration, where Carpenter, then just coming off of “Girl Meets World” and focusing on her music career, arrived wearing the final look from Phoebe Philo‘s Spring 2017 Céline show.

It was notable for multiple reasons. One, Philo’s Céline was never a red-carpet brand. So, though her designs were beloved by customers and the industry, we rarely saw it on the step-and-repeat. Two, Carpenter was 18 then and mostly known for her work on the Disney Channel. (“Girl Meets World” had ended earlier that year.) She wasn’t the person many would expect to be photographed wearing a Céline runway look.

Bolden told Glamour in 2018 that the Billboard Women In Music event was a sort of landmark moment for him and Carpenter, especially considering they had only started working together a few months earlier: “When it came to the follow-up questions the next day, my other stylist friends were calling me like, ‘Holy shit! Sabrina in Céline? That was amazing!'”

She and Bolden kept the accessories very simple — a wide gold hoop earring, a thin band rings, nude pointed-toe heels — putting the emphasis on the caped, bubble-hemmed dress, which made for more of A Moment.

Earlier this year, Carpenter described it as “one of the looks I’ll always remember” to Fashionista.

“When I saw it on the hanger, I never would have picked something out like that for myself,” she said. “And then once I tried it on, it really just made me like a completely different version of myself, in a good way. Not in a way that makes me feel out of my body. I felt like, ‘I’m in my body in a way that I’ve never felt before.’ It’s so beautiful when someone can read you in a way that you might not be able to read in yourself yet.”

Shop draped dresses inspired by Carpenter in the gallery, below.