Zendaya’s Unzipped Gown Is the 2023 Equivalent of Liz Hurley’s Safety-Pin Dress

In 1994, Elizabeth Hurley attended the premiere of Four Weddings and A Funeral with her then partner (and the film’s star) Hugh Grant, wearing a black Versace dress held together by strategically-placed safety pins. A relative unknown at the time, brands were not clamoring to dress Hurley, but Versace was dressing Grant and agreed to outfit his plus-one for the premiere, too. Even though it was the only sample available at Versace HQ, and scrambled together at the last minute, the dress made Hurley a star overnight, and it’s now considered one of the most significant red-carpet looks of the ’90s.

At the Louis Vuitton spring 2024 show at Paris Fashion Week today, modern red-carpet darling Zendaya wore a fitted, floor-sweeping dress with a similar risk-taking energy to Hurley’s famous LBD. But for Zendaya it was zips, not safety pins, bringing the daring edge to her look. Her white body-skimming dress featured a two-way zip from neck to hem, the chunky gold fastenings unzipped at either end to create a plunging neckline and a dramatic thigh-high slit.