Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s Winning Look Is More Little Mermaid Than Beauty and the Beast
If we’re going with Disney classics… At the Los Angeles premiere of ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ Gugu Mbatha-Raw outshines — literally — co-star Emma Watson, both wearing this season’s Oscar De La Renta.
In the upcoming live-action reboot of Beauty and the Beast, in which Harry Potter star Emma Watson plays the titular beauty, Belle, Gugu Mbatha-Raw stars as a feather duster — the feather duster now known as Plumette. (The Beauty and the Beast feather duster has undergone a few transformations in the film’s various incarnations; she’s been known alternately as Babette, Fifi, and, more descriptively, The Feather duster.) She’s a chic French lady, this feather duster, and the love interest of Lumière, the lantern played and voiced by Ewan McGregor in this fantastical reimagining of the Disney classic.
Good thing Mbatha-Raw herself is also quite the chic lady. The film debuts in theaters in just more than two weeks, and on Thursday, its cast touched down in Los Angeles for its latest premiere — Watson and Mbatha-Raw were recently joined by Céline Dion, Luke Evans, Aubrey Plaza, and more on the red carpet. Mbatha-Raw selected a royal blue sequined gown from Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia’s Oscar De La Renta debut, and though co-star Emma Watson elected a jumpsuit from the same collection, it was Mbatha-Raw who came away with a red carpet victory.
Who: Gugu Mbatha-Raw.
When: Thursday, March 2.
Where: The Los Angeles premiere of Beauty and the Beast with Emma Watson, Luke Evans, Dan Stevens, and director Bill Condon.
What: A royal blue sequined, ankle-length column gown from the Oscar De La Renta Fall 2017 collection, the debut by new creative directors Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia of Monse.
Why: The new Oscar De La Renta, under the guidance of Garcia and Kim, was practically tailor-made for the red carpet. It’s no wonder Emma Watson has already elected a few looks from the Fall 2017 collection for the Beauty and the Beast press tour; and the duo’s designs have also appeared on Brie Larson and Kiernan Shipka this week. The label is known for being the go-to of society ladies, an ideal match for a Disney princess film. So it’s Gugu Mbatha-Raw in a shimmering column gown who wins the red carpet this time around — she exudes understated elegance with a playful edge, clad in deep sea-blue sequins that might be just as well suited for a different beloved Disney classic: The Little Mermaid.
Emma Watson first saw Pretty Woman at age seven, and she still knows most of Julia Roberts’s lines:
