Fashion at the Grammys: ‘New Romantics’

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | February 5, 2024 |

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | February 5, 2024 |

Apart from surprise performances by Tracy Chapman and Joni Mitchell (somehow her first Grammys performance ever?!), the 2024 Grammy Awards were uneventful. The stylists to the stars, however, seem to have all been inspired by the same seasonally appropriate theme: romanticism. We’re talking vintage, we’re talking a little goth, we’re talking supple fabrics and flowing lines on glittering gowns. Let’s break it down.

Taylor Swift

Swift is no stranger to the romantic aesthetic, we might even have her to thank for the resurgence of the term with her song “New Romantics” off the album 1989, in which she compares herself and her friends to the writers and artists of the original Romantic movement of the early 1800s—a movement that, in reaction to the Enlightenment, “emphasized the individual, the subjective…the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional,”—a bunch of words that could describe Swift’s cannon, too. (And if you’re screaming “Taylor Swift doesn’t know shit about literature and art!” you’re dead wrong. Swift is nothing if not an overachieving English student.)

She wasn’t (and never will be) nominated for 1989, though, she was nominated and won Best Album for Midnights. Midnights, like most of Swift’s albums, is quite romantic, but it and all of the imagery around it was very firmly inspired by the 1970s, while her outfit for the night—a Schiaparelli gown paired with Lorrain Schwartz jewelry—was giving goth old Hollywood or perhaps dark academia? Which made sense when she made her acceptance speech and announced her new album, The Tortured Poets Department, out April 19th.

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Miley Cyrus

Cyrus managed several outfit changes throughout the night, but my favorite by far was this sparkly brown number by Gucci, complete with matching purse and feathers.

She won Best Record and Pop Solo Performance for “Flowers,” a song about eschewing traditional romantic norms in favor of—and I hate this word but it’s true—self-love. The combination of the glittering dress(es) and the windswept bouffant reminded me of the famous Klimt painting, “Judith and the Head of Holofernes,” painted in 1901.

Lana Del Rey


While Del Rey didn’t win any awards, she led the charge for the night’s aesthetic, nodding to the coquette trend with bows in her hair and on her hands and feet. Do I like the look? Yes. Do I like it for the Grammys? No, but casual is Lana’s thing, and she wears it well. It’s widower-chic. She looks like she belongs in a Capote novel.

Olivia Rodrigo

Appropriately leaning into the “Vampire” concept, both Rodrigo’s red carpet and stage looks were on theme. I mean, what’s more romantic than a simple red gown and a red lip? But the white, stoned vintage Versace was maybe my favorite dress of the night, immediately conjuring Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn post-eternal youth potion in Death Becomes Her.

Doja Cat

Doja is one of my favorite fashionistas for her fearless theatricality and commitment to the bit, and this gown by Dilara Fındıkoğlu is no different. It’s romantic for obvious reasons, simultaneously structured and loose, leaving little to the imagination, but the most genius part of the whole look? The glasses. I can just imagine the conversation between her and her stylist, “I want to look like a librarian who traveled back in time and became a lady in waiting to Marie Antoinette,” or some such thing.

Honorable mentions:
boygenius

Because what’s more romantic than a girl group dressed up to take you to the senior prom?

Joni Mitchell

Behold: the inventor of romantic yearning in her velvet celestial finery.