Meghann Fahy was always going to look like the main character at the premiere of Netflix's The Perfect Couple. What the Emmy-nominated actress wasn't going to do was method dress—at least not in the usual, cut-and-paste-from-the-costume-department sense.
Fahy instead decided to channel her character, maid of honor Merritt—who sits at the center of a major murder—in a more subtle fashion. She and stylist Thomas Carter Phillips pulled a quintessential naked dress by Victoria Beckham for the task. The dress entailed a delicate, sheer, black lace midi silhouette with a plunging V-neckline in the front and even less fabric in the back. It was a little femme fatale, a little boudoir, and very much a nod to Merritt's psyche.
"The character that I play is a woman with a really beautiful heart who is misunderstood by some people," Fahy tells me over the phone a few hours before slipping into the suggestion of a dress. "She's caught in between what she represents to other people and how she feels about who she is. I [wanted to] honor her in this moment by stepping out in this beautiful Victoria Beckham dress that feels very confident."
One look at the barely-there lace, and it's clear this is a piece for a woman who's secure in who she is—on- or off-screen. (And as far as homages to The Perfect Couple's plot, an all-lace number hits much harder than a Nantucket-coded seersucker would.) The actor says she and Phillips knew this dress was the one almost immediately in their fittings.
"Meghann and I were drawn to the intricacy of this layered lace Victoria Beckham look," her stylist tells me. "It is sexy and fun, and we thought it was perfect for the premiere of this end-of-summer show."
A dress this daring didn't need much enhancement in the beauty department. Before joining costars Nicole Kidman and Liev Schrieber on the red carpet, hairstylist Cameron Rains and makeup artist Jen Tioseco collaborated on a chicly minimal look to enhance the dress's dramatic open back and all-over sheer lace. (Fahy tells me her team always gets psyched up for the carpet with a good playlist and good food—Sabrina Carpenter's Short N' Sweet was her "no-skip" soundtrack to the getting-ready session.)
Bold eyeliner with light, flushed cheeks, a peachy nude lip, and a low bun with a hint of volume were all Fahy needed. "We want to have the hair in some iteration of up because the back of the dress is so stunning with the open back," she explains. "I mean, my personal taste is always really fresh and glowy."
Fahy 's beauty was closer to her everyday style than her lingerie-like dress. On her days off, she says she's "very much a jeans and a T-shirt girl." Classic colors and simple patterns are usually her style M.O.
But in a roundabout way, her dress's simplicity also resonated with her style North Star. "Victoria Beckham really speaks to me just in terms of the sort of classic simplicity that a lot of her pieces have," she says.
This time, going the simple route made a bigger impact. Fahy may have once played a fashion editor on The Bold Type, but she says she's only now getting more comfortable in the designer world. "It was something that I've considered myself to be very new to these last couple of years," she explains. Showing up to a major premiere in her Victoria Beckham look is a sign of her growing confidence.
"It's a moment for me as an individual to feel a little bit more comfortable, maybe taking a bit more of a risk," she says. "I don't know that I would have been able to step out in a dress like this a couple of years ago. I might have been too nervous or something."
It didn't sound like Fahy was worried about her big-style swing now. "This beautiful piece feels so unique and so singular, and it's very different than anything I've worn before." Spoken like a true main character.
