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The annual Marrakech Film Festival regularly draws a glamorous crowd, with this year’s jury including Bong Joon Ho, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jenna Ortega, Celine Song, and Jodie Foster. For the event’s opening night—now in its 22nd year—Ortega opted for a quietly dramatic (and a little bit divisive) red-carpet moment.
The Wednesday actor stepped out onto the red carpet in a look from Bevza’s spring 2026 collection, comprising of a black halterneck bodysuit with a sharp, plunging collar and a black, sculptural structured long skirt. Paired together, it created a peplum-like silhouette.
Makeup, by Saskia Ryan, was smoky and sensual—done using Dior Beauty, with Ortega’s long, cherry cola-tinted hair worn loose and tousled. It was a signature look for Ortega, in keeping with the powerfully gothic glam she and stylist Enrique Melendez have established to great effect over the last year. Whether in a shredded dress via GapStudio, a reptilian skin-like Ashi Studio gown, or mall goth boots on the beach, Ortega has stayed committed to the fashions of the night.
Ortega was also joined on the red carpet by fellow jury member and actor Anya Taylor-Joy, who wore a custom black Dior gown with a bubbled, two-tiered silhouette—an elegant, nostalgic-feeling dress that speaks to the same era as the original peplums that abounded in the Dior New Look of 1947.
Ortega’s gown for the evening was by the Kyiv-born label founded by designer Svitlana Bevza, known for its minimalist aesthetic and refined tailoring, and which has found fans in the likes of Katie Holmes, Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, and Pamela Anderson. The spring 2026 collection took things more abstract, with looks like Ortega’s focused on geometric shaping and clean lines.
The peplum, then, is not of the style lexicon one might recall from the 2010s moment in fashion (when some of us were dressing business casual for the club and dancing to Skrillex…), but with a more elegant, sophisticated identity. Peplums have also been finding their way back to the runways: for Erdem fall 2025, they were presented as fitted coats and ladylike circle skirts in sumptuous fabrics that recalled Dior’s New Look too. Ashlynn Park presented some softly flared peplums on cropped jackets and tailored vests, while Steven Stokey-Daley cut his trench coats short and cinched them at the waist—a playful little peplum in disguise.
In the world of celebritydom, too, the peplum’s antiquated style past has been forgotten, now embraced as a mark of a true, IYKYK fashion connoisseur: Kim Kardashian, for one, wore a vintage John Galliano peplum skirt suit to her Paris robbery trial, and both Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande have delighted in the style on the Wicked: For Good press tour.
The fashion pendulum has now swung back in favor of the kind of polished, prim elegance in which peplums feel right at home—and as Jenna Ortega proves too, a peplum can be very, very cool.
This article was originally published on Vogue.com.
