Sarah Pidgeon, who is currently portraying Carolyn Bessette Kennedy in FX’s Love Story, arrived at the Actor Awards in a dress from the Balenciaga Spring 2026 collection.
The gown comes from Pierpaolo Piccioli’s runway debut as Balenciaga’s Creative Director.
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The blush pink strapless gown was first seen on the runway.
“I wanted to create volume as well, shape, silhouette as Cristóbal did,” Piccioli said of his debut, referring to the work of Cristóbal Balenciaga .
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The back of the dress.
She accessorized with Rahaminov jewelry, including platinum studs with round diamonds and a diamond ring.
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Pidgeon wore her hair in a loose ponytail at the nape of her neck.
Bessette’s clothing “really helped inform the character,” Pidgeon said. “My favorite piece were the [Yohji] Yamamoto pieces she wore. And I’m not sure if she was aware of this, but Yamamoto describes designing clothing as armor for women.”
Pidgeon added, “I think understanding — or at least my interpretation of her relation to the press — she was fiercely private, so I think it made so much sense, and you could feel it when you put the clothes on. It makes you stand in a different way, and it sort of holds you in and protects you.”
As Lauren Santo Domingo wrote in the February issue of Town & Country, “CBK style was never about the item, it was about the attitude.”
“People tend to romanticize her restraint as if it were some grand, conceptual act of minimalism,” she explained. “But I believe the truth is much simpler: She was a young woman working in fashion, carefully buying designer pieces on a fashion-girl budget. She wasn’t curating an aesthetic manifesto, she was doing what the rest of us were doing—albeit a whole lot better than everyone else.”
Emily Burack (she/her) is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, celebrities, the royals, and a wide range of other topics. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma, a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram.
