Jodie Turner-Smith is a red carpet tour de force. The Queen & Slim actress has been turning heads at Hollywood events over the past few years with a relentless stream of jaw-dropping looks. And now, her style has been given the recognition it deserves.
Turner-Smith hosted last night’s 2022 Fashion Awards. The British Fashion Council’s annual event, hosted in the Royal Albert Hall, involved Yinka Illori-designed gongs being handed to the likes of Valentino’s creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli, Katie Grand and Bella Hadid.
The actress has worked hard to earn her chops as a style icon since her press tour for 2019’s Queen & Slim, alongside Daniel Kaluuya, where she turned up to each and every red carpet or promotional event in full regalia.
One of Turner-Smith’s earliest and most memorable looks was a custom canary yellow Gucci gown which she wore to the 2020 Bafta Awards while eight months pregnant. She strutted the red carpet arm in arm with her husband and fellow actor Joshua Jackson.
During her pregnancy, she also became one of the earlier advocates of the bump-out maternity looks. These came before Rihanna would break the internet with her bump-bearing pregnancy looks in 2022. On The Graham Norton Show in 2020, Turner-Smith perched on the legendary red couch while clad in a shrouded black crop top and trousers co-ord, paired with a chunky snake choker, choppy bob and exposed bump.
RiRi may have been lauded for her belly-out looks this year, but this was two years before. Turner-Smith was also nowhere near Rihanna’s level of fame when she appeared on The Graham Norton Show.
She attracted a fair amount of flak, with online trolls calling for “the pregnant woman to cover up”. But Turner-Smith dresses how she wants, and made it clear in a post to Twitter that she “gives zero f***s about your disdain for pregnant women’s bodies”.
Following the bold baby bump looks of the Queen & Slim press tour that cemented Turner-Smith as a favourite in the fashion world, she became a Gucci ambassador. Perfectly encapsulating the (as of recently) former creative director Alessandro Michele’s Gucci ethos — maximalist, sexy and gender fluid — Turner-Smith appeared at a number of events in full Gucci looks, earning praise for each.
She went full flamingo in November 2021 when attending the LACMA Art+Film gala, wearing a bedazzled multi-tonal pink Gucci gown with hot pink ostrich feather armbands and contrasting emerald eye make-up. The rest of 2021 brought more and more Gucci, and if there’s one thing about Turner-Smith, it’s that she loves colour. One of the star’s most memorable looks of last year came from another chat show, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where she wore a full Christopher John Rogers look with a rainbow-embroidered corset and multi-coloured culottes.
This year, she’s pulled out more of the stops, going full flapper at the 2022 Met Gala, rocking up to the Venice Film Festival in a dress which can only be described as a chic version of Joseph’s amazing technicolour dream coat, and gracing Cannes with the most interesting looks of the fortnight.
At last night’s event, she made five outfit changes, beginning the evening in neon-green Gucci and going on to work through some of Britain’s most exciting designers — from Richard Quinn to 16Arlington.