Emma Corrin is Embracing the Theatricality of Fashion
For actor Emma Corrin, fashion is another performance.
Photography by Tung Walsh
Styled by Jennifer Eymère
When Emma Corrin was asked to walk in Miu Miu’s Autumn/Winter 2023 show earlier this year, it brought back memories of a chapter of their life most of us are unaware of. In 2017, Corrin walked for the British designer Molly Goddard in a pouffy white dress, silver sequined tights, and a pair of red ballet pumps with bows on them. It was a year before they would become, in the eyes of the public, an actor—but already they had established an intriguing relationship with the pomp and fancy of wearing clothes that feel both audacious (or, as Corrin puts it, “larger than life”) and also speak, in some way, to your soul. “They always made the clothes look special,” Goddard herself remembers. “Emma moved so confidently and with real strength.”
“I felt it was performative,” Corrin says now: the odd act of walking a runway with people watching, as if you were assuming some kind of character for those brief seconds spent in front of the audience. Of course, Corrin’s life is indebted to that very act of performance. As an actor, they have played a princess, a sleuth, a scammer, and, soon, a comic book villain. Walking a runway in front of hundreds of people didn’t feel that different.
“I really enjoyed playing with the extremes of stuff, and the absurd, and making these characters.”
Of course, when you’re asked to do something you haven’t in a while, the prep is more pragmatic. Equally, on the surface, it would seem like they weren’t playing a character. “It was very nerve-wracking because it was like, Emma Corrin is walking for Miu Miu,” Corrin—an ambassador for the brand, in addition to Cartier—recalls of that day in March. “Wearing heels no less, which I don’t do often. I asked them if I could practice loads and loads before because I was so worried. You don’t want to fuck up because it’s such a beautiful collection, and Ms. Prada is amazing. She’s the last person you want to disappoint by falling on your face.” Corrin turned the corner and walked out towards the audience wearing those heels, a fawn roll-neck sweater, and a pair of intensely bejeweled underwear, carrying a black handbag. Their tattoo of two cherubs, gracing their leg, watched over them. “I didn’t fall! I was convinced I would.”
You can plot the path between the kind of interest Corrin had in fashion as a child and the relationship they have with it now. Back then, when it came to dressing themself, “I didn’t really care,” they say. “I was quite a low-key kid. I was outside finding woodlice in my outdoor uniform.” Fashion was fun when it was intentional. “I had a long phase of only wearing boys’ clothes, which won’t be surprising to anyone now… but yeah, I loved a costume.”
As a teenager, Corrin studied the works of Shakespeare at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in a gap year after high school, before later reading Education, English, Drama, and the Arts at Cambridge’s lauded St John’s College. Historical prestige and drama sat alongside each other in Corrin’s education; Shakespeare being on the syllabus, perhaps subconsciously, tied a thread between the demureness of the present and the ostentation of the fashion of the past. Now, dressing up feels like it’s in Corrin’s blood.
It’s been eked out by Harry Lambert, the London stylist who made his name dressing Harry Styles and collaborating with him on projects such as his lifestyle brand Pleasing. Lambert and Corrin met through mutual friends before their breakout performance as Diana, Princess of Wales. “Honestly, Harry Lambert is where it begins and ends,” Corrin says now. Until they met, “I didn’t realize that I really enjoyed playing with the extremes of stuff, and the absurd, and making these characters,” they say. “I met a real comrade in him. We have a similar sense of being like… ‘Let’s try to be bizarre and push the limits of what people expect.’ It’s really fun. I always had an adventurous side, of wanting to see what was possible. Harry has that as well.”
“I was quite a low-key kid…I had a long phase of only wearing boys’ clothes, which won’t be surprising to anyone now.”
The looks aren’t always zany or extreme for the sake of causing conversation. Together, Lambert and Corrin sit down and discuss the upcoming events they need to prepare for: fashion shows, red carpets, magazine shoots. “During the shows, we’re always on the lookout for designers that are on the up who haven’t quite been discovered yet and saying, ‘We could do something really cool with this’ or, ‘This could be outrageous and really fun.’ You can be in a random bookshop somewhere, and find a random Playbill, and Harry will find a random graphic in a weird outfit and be like, ‘Let’s do this.’”
Such was the case for the 2022 Met Gala theme: Gilded Glamour. Corrin created a custom look—with the help of Lambert, Miu Miu, and Cartier—inspired by the “King of the Dudes,” the 19th-century socialite Evander Berry Wall, who treated dressing like a competitive sport. He was a discovery the two made while scouring for references for the event. While most celebrities wore elegant gowns and predictable suits, Corrin arrived in a towering top hat, an oversized plaid jacket, high-waisted boxer shorts, a waistcoat, and pointed black patent leather boots. They’ve found a way to make outlandish fashion feel classy—never crass.
Still, they can shapeshift: at the Toronto Film Festival, they “skipped pants,” as Teen Vogue put it, wearing a Miu Miu leotard with billowing black organza sleeves—a look most would consider ultra-feminine. At the 2022 Olivier Awards, Corrin amped up the camp wearing a Loewe balloon dress taken straight off the runway. Similarly, at the London Film Festival, they wore a headline-grabbing JW Anderson minidress that resembled a goldfish swimming in a plastic bag. “You can pinpoint a Harry Lambert–styled outfit by understanding the wink and theatricality of his style,” I say.
“The theatricality,” Corrin says back to me. “That’s it. That’s the context in which I’m interested in fashion.”
HAIR Charlotte Dubreuil
MAKEUP Gina Kane
MANICURE Huberte Cesarion
CASTING Lauren Tabach
PRODUCER Mariana Suplicy
LOCAL PRODUCER Joshua Glasgow
LIGHT ASSISTANT Oliver Webb
STYLIST ASSISTANT Kenzia Bengel de Vaulx
