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Angelina Jolie is, perhaps, the ultimate Hollywood actress: dignified in speech with a Hellenic beauty and an underlying pathos that evokes silent-film actresses Louise Brooks and Pauline Starke, as well as icon Marilyn Monroe. Her performance in the Pablo Larraín–directed Maria Callas biopic—which British Vogue editor Radhika Seth described as Jolie’s greatest of all time and won her an eight-minute standing ovation at the Venice International Film Festival—has seen her become an avatar for a resplendent strain of old-world composure otherwise lost to time.
“I chose not to copy [Maria’s] looks because they are hers, and her Venice carpets were stunning, so I gave a little nod to her—in a different way,” Jolie recently said of her own Venice wardrobe. “But I made sure to wear something ladylike in her honor.” The actor spent most of her time dressed in Saint Laurent and Tom Ford dresses with Grecian-style sleeves that served as a subtle homage to the Greek American soprano, before later wearing a knitted column at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado cut from the most luxurious shade of cashmere with Roger Vivier’s buckled City pumps.
Blanket dressing can be as polished, decadent and sumptuous as a stole-topped Tamara Ralph gown—the draped chiffon number that Angelina Jolie wore to the premiere of Maria—but there’s perhaps something more vulnerable about the desire to swaddle oneself in ultrasoft yarns.
It reminds me of Callas’s own relationship to clothing, which continues to inspire. “An armour,” as Vogue editor Liam Hess noted in an interview with Jolie, “that allowed her to step out into an at-times hostile world.”
