Dua Lipa has arrived at the 81st Golden Globes red carpet in a show-stopping look worthy of the evening’s career significance. She’s won many awards for her music over the years, but this marks the pop star’s first Golden Globes nomination and attendance.
Nominated for best original song for the dance track ‘Dance the Night’, which she created with Mark Ronson for the Barbie soundtrack, Lipa arrived on the red carpet in a striking ensemble.
The custom look designed by Schiaparelli‘s creative director, Daniel Roseberry, consisted of a strapless black gown with a mermaid skirt. The fitted velvet bodice notably featured gold hardware resembling anatomical bones—the couturier‘s signature, and a modern twist on Elsa Schiaparelli’s legendary ‘Skeleton Dress’, which she famously created with surrealist artist Salvador Dalí in the 1930s.
She opted for a special accessory in an archival Tiffany & Co. necklace from 1962 to compliment the statement dress. Rendered in gold and platinum with yellow beryl, topaz quartz and diamonds, the piece was a masterful choice for the glamorous affair.
Matching her freshly dyed red hair, Lipa’s makeup was kept natural and warm with a slight brown smokey eye and blushed cheeks.
While Lipa’s nominated disco score may give off carefree vibes, piecing together the perfect dance track was no easy feat.
“Barbie completely took over our lives—we were completely Barbie-fied,” Lipa told Variety in an interview about the song. “We were putting post-it notes everywhere, trying to brainstorm what ‘Dance the Night’ was going to be.”
As Lipa and producer/co-writer Mark Ronson shared, the creation of ‘Dance the Night’ was a valiant labour of love for the two artists, who worked together while Lipa was on break from touring.
After all, it wasn’t just about crafting a catchy tune but making sure that it fit with the already-filmed dance scene that featured all the Barbies dancing in step. But with some clever reverse-engineering, Lipa and Ronson were able to conceive a song that thrived far beyond the film’s release.
“We wrote ‘Dance the Night’ so many times to match the picture,” Ronson shared in the same interview.
In addition to contributing music to the movie’s soundtrack, Lipa also made a cameo in the film as a blue-haired mermaid version of the Mattel doll.
The British pop star reflected on the experience of the movie in an interview with Dazed.
“Barbie, the doll, has this idea of what perfection should be,” she explained. “The film—and there’s a lot of diversity in the cast—is touching exactly on the buttons that maybe it presses and shows a different story.”
“Greta said that the whole film was inspired by disco,” she added of how the song fits into the film’s world. “So there’s a lot of very glittery and pop moments in it.”
Watch the full Barbie movie ‘Dance the Night Away’ scene below.
