- The color of Sydney Sweeney's Emmys dress was dubbed by some online as "Republican Red" or "MAGA Red."
- The bright shade has become a powerful branding tool for the Trump administration.
- Celebrity stylists told BI they won't shy away from red for fear of political connotations.
A flick of honey-blonde hair, a ripple of ruby-red satin: Sydney Sweeney arrived at the Emmys on Sunday looking every bit the Hollywood bombshell that she has angled herself to become.
And yet, the actor's custom Oscar de la Renta gown didn't translate as just glamour or sex appeal for everyone watching the awards show. Instead, a faction of online commenters said the color evoked other cultural and political associations, dubbing the shade "Republican Red." One Reddit user quipped, "She's solidified herself as a MAGA Barbie."
Sweeney wasn't the only celebrity who attended the Emmys in solid red, but her styling struck a nerve. Whether it was due to the particular hue that Sweeney wore — not maroon or burgundy, but the kind of red that might look familiar on a sea of red baseball caps at a campaign event — or the heightened sensitivity recently around Sweeney's personal politics, the hubbub over a simple red dress speaks to the color's charged role in the current political climate.
Representatives for Sweeney and her stylist, Molly Dickson, didn't respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Since the introduction of the bright red "Make America Great Again" hat in 2015 and its proliferation in the past decade, the color has become a powerful branding tool for President Donald Trump's administration — and it's not just about baseball caps anymore. Multiple cosmetics companies, including MAGA Red Beauty, sell shades of lipstick to match Trump's iconic accessory. The president's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, owns an apparel brand that launched a "MAGA Red Collection" earlier this year. The tagline reads, "Red isn't just a color — it's a statement."
How red became political
While the fuss over a color's political connotations might seem extreme, red garments have held statement-making power for centuries. Before synthetic dyes emerged in the mid-19th century, brilliant red dyes were created from natural resources like the cochineal insect, which is difficult to harvest and expensive to import. Red clothing therefore came to symbolize wealth and prestige, especially among monarchs, nobles, and clergymen.
Keith Recker, author of "Deep Color: The Shades That Shape Our Souls," told me that our symbolic fascination with the color likely goes back even further, citing red ochre discovered by archaeologists at ancient burial sites.
"It's the color of our blood. It's the color that keeps us alive," Recker said. "It's linked with sex, romance, vitality — all linked to the essence of us as a species."
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, as social movements urged people to wrest power from their oppressors, red evolved to connote defiance, martyrdom, and firebrand leftist politics, from the flags of the French Revolution to the seeds of communism in Soviet Russia. How it came to be associated with the Republican Party in the US was, by many accounts, sheer happenstance. During the 2000 presidential election cycle, certain news outlets made arbitrary decisions to color-code electoral maps, using blue for Democrat Al Gore and red for Republican George W. Bush. The dichotomy stuck: 25 years later, it's seeped into our subconscious.
"The Republican Party has become the color that it was assigned," Recker said. "I'm blaming it on red's documented tendency to dominate, red's loud voice."
Psychologically, Recker may be onto something. Studies have shown that combat athletes who are randomly assigned red uniforms are more likely to win, and monkeys respond more submissively to handlers wearing red. It's not a stretch to suggest that seeing someone in a red hat, or even a red dress, may arouse similar associations and emotional reactions in the brain: dominance and authority, or perhaps, by extension, dread and aversion.
However, to get the full picture of red's important role in pop culture, fashion and beauty may be equally instructive. In 2008, researchers at the University of Rochester found that women wearing red were more likely to be described as attractive by men. A 2017 study found that both men and women rated themselves as more attractive when wearing red, as opposed to other colors.
If red is the color most associated with power, then magnetism and confidence are powerful, too.
Christopher Cuozzo, who has designed several suits for White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, previously told Business Insider he was "pleasantly surprised" when Leavitt asked for a custom look in MAGA's bespoke red.
"It's one of my favorite colors," Cuozzo said. "It screams confidence."
'Somebody shouldn't own a color'
As a stylist who's dressed celebrities like Laura Dern and Uma Thurman, Julia von Boehm said it's part of her job to consider every angle of a client's image — including how politics or world events might color the impact of a red carpet look.
When Russia invaded Ukraine just a few weeks before the 2022 Oscars, von Boehm was roused to change course at the last moment. She'd planned for her longtime client, Nicole Kidman, to wear a sparkly red gown by Armani to the event, but that suddenly felt "quite loud" for the occasion. It's not that she was worried Kidman would be criticized; it's that she wanted her styling to suit the mood. Kidman wore light blue instead.
Still, that doesn't mean von Boehm has been shunning red as a rule. On the contrary, she told me that the color is far too bold and multi-dimensional to be co-opted by one man or one political movement.
"You cannot avoid red for the rest of the presidency," von Boehm said. "Somebody shouldn't own a color."
A red dress can serve many functions, von Boehm added. It can be sexy. It can be sassy. It can backfire if the wearer isn't keen to draw attention, which can make the color tricky to work with.
"I would dress a client only in red if she really feels at her best," von Boehm said. "Sometimes, you don't want to stand out that much."
Perhaps more so than other colors in a stylist's arsenal, red's context is key. Its impact can shift wildly based on how it's being worn, and in the case of Sweeney, who it's being worn by. Von Boehm said she wouldn't put her client in a red baseball cap, for example, because of its current connotations. Neither would stylist Jennifer Udechukwu, who has worked with stars like Cardi B and Victoria Monét; she said the combination has been stained with assumptions and tends to put people on edge.
But navigating context is what a stylist gets paid to do, and when executed properly, red can still be a classic Hollywood showstopper.
"I don't think red is a color to be afraid of," Udechukwu said. "What it comes down to is the client's political background and what may already be in the headlines. There's a time and there's a place."
Whether Sweeney's dress was really just a red dress or a subtle signifier of her political affiliations, we'll never know for sure. But from a historical perspective, Recker agreed that the MAGA movement is harnessing powerful symbolism to its advantage.
"Trump is, like most people, like most of us, making the best use of the available symbolic language. He is not inventing it, he's not changing it; he's using it, and that's one reason this will just be a blip," Recker said. "Red has seen us all come and go, and this won't be its last word."
