What Happens To Oscars Dresses After The Red Carpet Is Over?

Everyone knows the Academy Awards red carpet is the carpet of the year in Hollywood. All your favourite movie stars congregate to celebrate achievement in cinema but also, it’s a good excuse to wear a killer dress.

Mostly, stars are loaned a dress (usually by a brand they’re affiliated with) or, sometimes, paid to wear a certain designer gown to ensure valuable publicity for the brand – even better if the star in question wins one of the coveted gold statuettes.

Most dresses, unfortunately, are returned days after the event and are then archived and if we're lucky, sometimes end up in the occasional exhibition. Sometimes, the gowns are gifted if the brand is feeling particularly generous and movie stars get to keep their special dress - a truly priceless token of a truly iconic moment in history.

Some gowns end up with fascinating histories, handed from family to friends and then disappearing again into great unknown. And while most of these gowns are works of art in their own right the world only gets to glimpse them for a short while before they're hung up and put away, which doesn't really seem fair.

Where have some of your favourite red carpet dresses ended up over the years? Scroll on to find out where these gowns have ended up and who has them now.

Audrey Hepburn

In 2011, Audrey Hepburn’s 1954 Hubert de Givenchy-designed gown, a white A-line boat neck number in floral lace with a matching belt, tuned up at auction. It’s reported that Hepburn’s mother Ella van Heemstra gifted the dress to a family friend in America and it ended up in a box collecting dust until the family decided to sell it.

The gown fetched $153, 056 at auction and was sold to a private collector.

Julia Roberts

In 1992 Julia Roberts wore a black Valentino gown with white ‘Y’ shape detail across the front of the dress that was mimicked on the train.

But where is the dress now?

“It’s under my bed, in a box,” Roberts told People in 2017. “I have this little space in my house that my husband refers to as the heritage collection. Things I go, 'I can’t get rid of [this], what about Hazel?’” Roberts told the publication of saving the dress for her daughter. We wonder if Hazel is playing dress ups with that Valentino gown right now..