Sabrina Carpenter's $3.6 million Dior Coachella moment. Fashion designer Anna Sui and photographer Bruce Weber draw crowds — and stoke nostalgia — with L.A. appearances and exhibitions. And Pamela Anderson brings her natural beauty to a collaboration with celeb-loved furniture brand Olive Ateliers.
By Booth Moore
Sabrina Carpenter wore a Dior red silk dress embroidered with sequins on stage at Coachella. Source: Dior/Alfredo Flores/Sarah Carpenter
LVMH Joins Coachella Brand Bonanza
It’s festival—and festival fashion—season, which brings influential looks onstage and off.
At Coachella weekend one, Sabrina Carpenter turned the main stage into Sabrinawood with a performance that was both cinematic—and chock-full of brand placements.
I knew we were in for a new level of onstage branding when the camera panned to Carpenter’s stack of Louis Vuitton logo luggage in the backseat during her encounter with Sam Elliott as a creepy police officer.
LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton-owned fashion house Dior also played a role, creating all four looks for the pop star’s performance, including a red silk mini dress, a gold embroidered dress with sequins and chiffon sleeves, a white embroidered bra top and fringe skirt and a black lace-and-satin bodysuit and cape.
I can’t recall another luxury brand placement as high-profile since Balmain designed Beyoncé’s costumes in 2018.
Sabrina Carpenter performs at Coachella 2026 in Indio, California. Source: Getty
Watching the performance (on livestream, yes), I guessed Carpenter’s costumes might have been Chanel, since the 1920s-inspired drop-waist silhouette has been mined by creative director Matthieu Blazy in his runway collections and has started to take off in the real world as a trend among fashion insiders.
Surprise! The belted drop-waist mini and the rest were Dior by Jonathan Anderson. They didn’t look much like his vision for the house so far, but that’s often the case with custom clothing made for celebrities, with the brand functioning more as a dressmaker for a specific artistic vision.
Carpenter, who is styled by Jared Ellner, is not an official ambassador for Dior or Louis Vuitton, at least not yet, but she does have a special relationship with the brands. She wore a pantless Louis Vuitton look to last year’s Met Gala and attended both the Dior and Louis Vuitton menswear shows in 2025.
The Sabrinawood fashion partnership paid off, garnering $3.6 million in total earned media impact for Dior, according to Launchmetrics, but it was a drop in the bucket compared with the $90 million in media impact value Dior earned at its Fall 2026 women’s runway show, as a comparison.
Sabrina Carpenter backstage at Coachella 2026. Source: Getty
Elsewhere onstage at the festival, lingerie looks reigned, from Addison Rae’s Agent Provocateur red latex bra top and micro shorts to Bini’s tropical siren-inspired looks by emerging Filipino designer Raf Villas; FKA Twigs’ destroyed fetish wear by New York-based Guvanch, to Katseye’s candy-colored confections by Vietnamese label La Lune.
Katseye performs at Coachella. Source: Getty
On the men’s designer front, Sombr continued his run of custom Valentino, while Giveon and Labrinth stepped out in custom Balenciaga.
Justin Bieber went more casual in a hoodie and shorts, repping his brand SKYLRK, which sold an astonishing $5 million in merch from its installation at the festival, according to Vogue. And speaking of hoodies, Gap was the festival’s first exclusive apparel sponsor, erecting a Gap Hoodie House on the grounds.
Sombr performs in custom Valentino at Coachella. Source: Getty
Celebs flocked to branded parties hosted by Guess, Airbnb, Rhode, Barbie and more. And Teyana Taylor brought her inimitable red carpet style to the Coachella-adjacent Revolve Festival, wearing one of the retailer-turned-design house's latest Revolve Los Angeles creations. Per usual, it left little to the imagination. But isn't that what Coachella is all about?
Teyana Taylor wears Revolve Los Angeles to attend the 9th Annual REVOLVE Festival at Cavallo Ranch on April 11, 2026 in Thermal, California. Source: Getty Images for REVOLVE
Anna Sui in front of pieces from her 1991 grunge collection at the ASU FIDM Museum in L.A. Source: ASU FIDM
Anna Sui on the Enduring Fascination with the Nineties
Anna Sui brought out fashionistas Joe Zee, TJ Walker, Linda Ramone, Paul Cavaco and more for a walk down memory lane in downtown L.A. last week.
The legendary designer had a book signing at ASU FIDM in conjunction with the fashion school museum's current exhibition, Obsessed: Fashion and Nostalgia in the '90s.
In conversation with school director Dennita Sewell, Sui shared memories of her Spring 1993 grunge collection, which hit the runway the same season as Marc Jacobs’ grunge collection but never seems to get as much credit as a fashion earthquake. That’s despite the fact that hers was actually produced. His, for Perry Ellis, was not, because he famously got fired after it was shown, which you can learn more about in the A24 documentary out now, Marc by Sofia, out now.
Anna Sui and Joe Zee. Source: ASU FIDM
"It turned fashion on its head. You know, they didn't know where to put us or what to do with it," Sui said of the grunge style. "But it really resonated with that generation and the models really liked it because suddenly they had clothes for their generation, not mommy's. And they were so used to wearing these power suits, feeling like they were dressing like an older person."
At the time, when supermodels were the influencers, Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell started calling Sui for her lace babydoll dresses, which they wore all around Paris Couture Week. The off-duty styles became so popular with models, the designer said she was shipping them to Paris in bulk, “to the point where I heard that Karl [Lagerfeld] was complaining that’s all everyone was wearing.”
Including Madonna, who showed up front row at a Jean Paul Gaultier show wearing an Anna Sui babydoll dress.
What makes the ’90s so enduringly fascinating? “This was pre-digital ... The way we found out information was going out, hanging out, word of mouth ... Everything was very organic and very genuine,” she said. “And then a model would be dating one of the new actors and bringing him backstage and nothing was ... paid for.”
For more on those times, check out the fab Rizzoli book The Nineties x Anna Sui — and ASU FIDM’s great little exhibition, including pieces from her grunge collection, open through June 27, 2026.
The Nineties x Anna Sui. Source: ASU FIDM
Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Glen Cove, Long Island, 1997. Source: Bruce Weber courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles
Bruce Weber's Visual Memoir at Fahey/Klein Gallery
Water polo player Jeff Aquilon was the surprise guest at photographer Bruce Weber’s standing-room-only book signing and talk Saturday at Fahey/Klein Gallery, in conjunction with the exhibition Bruce Weber: Try a Little Tenderness, on view through June 6.
Weber, who created some of the most iconic fashion photographs of the 1980s and 1990s for Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Versace, Abercrombie & Fitch and others, photographed Aquilon for the Soho News in 1978 after their chance meeting at Pepperdine University in Malibu, where Aquilon was captain of the water polo team.
The images defined a new kind of masculinity in fashion and sparked Klein’s interest in working with Weber, he recalled during the talk. Eventually, Aquilon would come to be known as the first male supermodel (he’s now retired and living in Santa Barbara with his family). Weber’s Calvin Klein campaigns would go on to transform fashion imagery forever.
Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix, Los Angeles, California, 1991. Source: Bruce Weber courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles
The raw intimacy and tender emotion Weber brought to those iconic campaign photos runs through the exhibition, which is a visual memoir of sorts, reflecting how his eye developed through family, friendship, mentorship, love, collaboration and lived experience. Celebrity portraits of Muhammad Ali, Keanu Reeves, River Phoenix, Sam Shepard, Kate Moss and others showcase Weber’s affinity for youth culture and his casual approach to depicting glamour, including an image of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy he shot in Glen Cove, New York, in 1997, which was eventually published in Vanity Fair after her death.
The exhibition coincides with the publication of Bruce Weber: My Education, a 565-page hardcover monograph published by Taschen.
Bruce Weber: Try a Little Tenderness is on view through June 6 at Fahey/Klein, 148 N. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles.
Kate Moss and friends, Miami, Florida, 2003. Source: Bruce Weber courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles
Pamela Anderson. Source: Getty/Olive Ateliers
Pamela Anderson Brings Her Natural Beauty to Celeb-Loved Olive Ateliers
It was fortuitous when Pamela Anderson mentioned gardening during her introduction to Designer of the Year winner Tory Burch at the Fashion Trust U.S. Awards last week, saying, “Tory makes you want to be the best, unapologetic version of yourself and keep discovering who that person is on the runway or in the garden.”
That moment resonated because the actress, whose Provençal-style home garden on Vancouver Island was featured in Architectural Digest last year, was also in town to debut a design collaboration close to nature.
The Sentimentalist is her new spring furniture and décor collection with Olive Ateliers, the L.A. Arts District–based retail and furniture design studio loved by Jennifer Lopez, Sofia Richie Grainge, Benny Blanco, Kendall Jenner and more.
“I grew up by the sea,” Anderson said. “I remember our tiny cabin on the dock, the wood turned silver from years of salt and weather.” That sense of gentle aging runs throughout the collection, which is made of natural materials like rattan and solid teak, alongside durable performance fabrics.
Spanning more than 40 pieces, it includes loungers, reading chairs with matching ottomans, dining tables, woven coffee tables, baskets and even a dog bed with mixed blue and ivory stripes.
Ross wearing Emmanuelle Khanh 1997 frames at the NAACP Image Awards in 2023. Source: Getty
“Pamela and I are both innately nostalgic,” said Olive Ateliers co-founder and chief brand officer Kendall Knox of creating the unfussy and romantic range. “We’ve connected over the rituals that shape our days—jazz, time in the garden and a deep appreciation for objects with history.”
The Sentimentalist collection, $75 to $3,499, is available online or at Olive Ateliers’ Los Angeles flagship, 1210 Mateo St., Los Angeles.
