AfriPulse
Here, she tells VF about choosing to style herself this awards season to honor the times in which she was left out of the room.
“I’m still gagging,” says Teyana Taylor, on the phone, calling from the car following a fitting for her instant-best-dressed Chanel double-whammy for the 2026 Oscars night. “You know when you ain’t even got the word?” the best supporting actress nominee tells me when I ask her to describe her dress. “It’s so good, I just cannot wait for you to see it. Literally, I was shaking, flipping it, and reversing in it, you hear me?”
“It’s so hard to find a dress that fits the way this dress fits, but is also comfortable,” Taylor says. “When you can move around, when you can spin in it. I felt like I was floating!”
She laughs. Thinks. And after her giddiness has subsided, Taylor finds the words: “Okay, I’ll give you spoilers,” she says. “I’ll give you the tea because this will be published after you’ve seen it.” “Classic, classic black and white Chanel,” she starts. “Whimsical! Fly like a birddd!”
Teyana Taylor at a fitting for her 2026 Oscars dress by Chanel in Paris earlier this month.
Courtesy of Chanel
Courtesy of Chanel
Courtesy of Chanel
Courtesy of Chanel
Taylor, it seems, has been dying to talk about her dress, a black and white frock that swaddles her body up top until it bursts into a skirt and train of cascading feathers. But she also made an honest-to-goodness real effort to keep the outfitter of this big night a secret. “Honestly, the way I’ve been holding this down, I’m so proud,” she says, “I literally sleep with my hands under my chin. I just can’t wait to tell everybody.
“It’s the energy surrounding that dress that I just felt like a whole other person. I just felt like a princess,” Taylor says. “It’s also a true collaboration.”
Courtesy of Chanel
Courtesy of Chanel
Courtesy of Chanel
The dress took 1225 hours of work to put together…
Courtesy of Chanel
The names of Taylor’s daughters embroidered in her dress.
Courtesy of Chanel
…and employed about 127,000 embroidered elements.
Courtesy of Chanel
Taylor has been plotting with the Chanel team for some time now. First came the Gotham Awards, where the actor wore a look from designer Matthieu Blazy’s debut collection for Chanel. Then came Blazy’s second runway show, which took place in New York–and where sat Taylor on its front row. The third easter egg, as Taylor puts it, was her attendance at the Chanel Fall/Winter 2026 show last week. She was also there for a fitting of both of her dresses. The one she wore to the Oscars, and the sultry white slip she donned at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party.
“Chanel is Chanel, it’s such an iconic brand that I would come to anything they ask me to,” Taylor says. But this was them coming to her, which felt different, she says. “When you are being invited to a show, you come to them, but this moment… They came to me with so much love. It’s been a dream come true.”
Taylor has been this season’s inarguable best dressed star. Her looks have been audacious and sharp— exciting and surprising, particularly for an star operating at a moment of such high visibility. There has been no safe option, no wallflower moment. That is, on one hand, because Taylor loves and breathes fashion, and on the other because, to honor that part of herself, she’s chosen to style herself for most of this awards season.
Teyana Taylor in Chanel for the 2026 Oscars
Photo: Daniel Jackson
The finished dress.
Courtesy of Chanel
She works with Wayman Bannerman and Micah McDonald for some of her looks, but when it comes to custom moments like last night’s, she prefers to take the lead. “I started from the bottom in this fashion space and really earned it brick by brick,” Taylor says. “That’s why I hold on to this moment. And don’t get me wrong, I love to collaborate with people here and there, especially when times get hectic, but in these moments, I take pride in styling myself. I cherish that I have the opportunity to navigate the biggest time in my career like this, no matter how much work it takes.”
Taylor’s fashion journey mirrors her career trajectory as an actor. She slowly but boldly created momentum, until arriving at the 2026 Oscars. The culmination of years of hard work and dedication, and two dreams came true in one swing.
Teyana Taylor at the 2026 Oscars in Chanel by Matthieu Blazy
John Shearer
“I remember there was a time when I didn’t have these types of outlets to be able to design with some of my favorite designers,” Taylor says. “I’ve worked very, very, very hard for times like this.”
Taylor says she wants to make sure these moments are as special as possible, and that means making sure that it’s her vision that’s being realized, not someone else’s. “It’s something I see, I want to be direct to paper, direct to pen,” she says, “I like the discussions and conversations about what the designer and I want it to be. Not every bit of ink is going to stick to the paper, some can roll right off, but it’s going through it and putting it together. But it’s something that I don’t think anybody could come in and do for me.”
That was the spirit of her collaboration with Blazy and Chanel.
“I was a little girl who couldn’t secure invites, who couldn’t secure being able to be in these kinds of rooms, and it was very isolating,” she says. Not anymore. “Now being in this position, in the room with a designer and the squad, the whole Chanel team has been amazing,” Taylor says. “They say it takes a village, and that’s one village I really appreciate.”
Teyana Taylor in a white Chanel dress for the 2026 Vanity Fair Oscar Party
Courtesy of Chanel
Courtesy of Chanel
Teyana Taylor and the 2026 Vanity Fair Oscar Party
Amy Sussman/Getty Images
Some actors see fashion as a task, as something they have to do as part of a laundry list of press commitments. But not Taylor, who is a studied fashion fanatic who now has access to the kinds of spaces and clothes she used to dream of. “I went down a Coco Chanel rabbit hole at a time where nobody knew who I was,” she says, recalling learning the designer’s history through reading books and watching documentaries or YouTube videos.
She also remembers when she and her best friend, who also works with her as her assistant, saw The Devil Wears Prada together. “It took me to another level of understanding that a million girls would kill for this job,” she says, recalling the famous line Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) hears from an executive when she’s ready to call it quits from her job at the fictional Runway magazine. “Understanding that a million girls would kill to grab that Chanel,” Taylor says. “I don’t take this for granted.”
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