Maria texted me after the MET Gala posts yesterday about Zendaya, positing that “part of what makes Zendaya’s style special is that she’s not afraid to be unrecognizable. So many of them, teen or not, are terrified of not being SEEN. Obviously the Rita Oras and the Bella Thornes but also JLO and Julia Roberts always look more or less the same”. She’s right. Zendaya is a style chameleon. And she looks different from one event to the next, one carpet to the next.
Remember her at the MET Gala? This is Zendaya after the gala, arriving back in LA, like a regular teenage girl waiting for her bags, getting caught at baggage claim by TMZ for a series of questions about Beyoncé and Jay Z.
There’s a rule on television though, an old rule that Traci Melchor told me came from Aaron Spelling. That back in the 70s and 80s, he wanted actresses to never change their hair, at least for 3 months or so, so that audiences could settle into familiarity with them. For Zendaya, who is just starting her career, whose acting and performing career has been relatively specialised and niche to date, it would have been sage advice… 20 years ago. But that’s arguably a pre-social media Hollywood standard. Now I’m not sure it matters as much. We all know what they look like as soon as they wake up in the morning.
