Gemma Chan wore a Dries Van Noten dress that looks like a painting to a screening of Josephine in London on Tuesday 13 October, and the resemblance is not a coincidence. The print on it is lifted from a 17th-century Flemish still life, and by the next morning fashion fans online were falling over themselves to say how much they loved it.
The actress wore the label's Daralyn dress, a sleeveless floor-length design in deep greens, burnt orange and earthy browns, with the enlarged artwork draped asymmetrically across the body. She finished the look with dangling Cartier earrings and a deliberately messy braid, styled by Rebecca Corbin-Murray.
Chan was at the Curzon Soho for a screening during the 70th BFI London Film Festival, where the thriller is showing before its cinema release next month. The dress did the rest of the work, and a Reddit thread about it drew hundreds of upvotes and a run of comments that were almost entirely admiring.
Gemma Chan stuns at the #LFF screening of ‘JOSEPHINE’ 📸 pic.twitter.com/LnYbmgVD1b
— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) October 13, 2026
The Print Has a 17th-Century Source
The gown comes from the house's autumn/winter 2026 womenswear collection, the first since creative director Julian Klausner took over following Dries Van Noten's retirement. Klausner built much of that collection around two still lifes painted in the 1680s, 'Two Peaches and a Butterfly on a Stone Plinth' and 'Flowers and Insects'.
Some pieces carried those paintings straight onto the fabric, while others pixelated and distorted them. Chan's dress belongs to the undistorted camp, blowing an enlarged Flemish painting print up until a single gown reads as a canvas. The tapestry-like richness does the heavy lifting, but the loose silhouette is what stops it overwhelming her, giving the artwork room to breathe instead of fighting the body underneath.
That balance is exactly why the label's prints tend to divide people, and why they appear on red carpets far less often than they might. One fashion commentator posted that they wished more actresses would take the risk, which is a familiar lament about a house better known among fashion insiders than among awards-season stylists.
The Film That Brought Her Out
The screening gave the dress a fitting stage. Josephine is written and directed by Beth de Araújo and follows an eight-year-old girl who witnesses a violent assault, and the parents who cannot reach her afterwards. Chan plays the mother, Claire, opposite Channing Tatum.
The film arrived in London with a reputation already attached. It premiered at Sundance in January, winning both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award in the US dramatic competition, then screened in competition in Berlin in February. It reaches US cinemas on 20 November, initially in selected markets.
Fans Fall for the Fabric
Back online, the fabric drew more attention than the cut. 'I am in love with that fabric,' one commenter wrote. 'I love how the shapes are clear, but not too defined, and the colours are rich and the accent colours are perfectly toned.' The same person added that the dress itself was nice rather than outrageous, and that the fabric was what made it.
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Others praised the restraint around it. 'Her simple hair and jewelry add to the gorgeous fabric instead of detracting from it,' one wrote, while another called the palette perfect for autumn. A third said simply that 'Gemma looks so regal and effortless'.
Plenty of the reaction was about Chan rather than the clothes. 'Every time I see Gemma Chan, I gasp,' read one of the thread's most popular comments. 'She is just so utterly beautiful.'
One Detail Split the Room
The only real complaint concerned the back of the dress, where a black strap crosses an open back and the print stops short of meeting itself. 'I would've loved pattern matching at the back,' one commenter wrote. 'The front is so gorgeous and cohesive, and then there's this loud back seam.'
Another said they did not love the back straps either, though they loved everything else about the look and singled out the colours. Even the sharpest critic of that seam could not stay annoyed for long, signing off with a verdict most of the thread would have endorsed: 'Gemma Chan 10/10 no notes though, incredibly elegant.'
