Opera Gloves Are Almost Comically High-Maintenance. That’s Why I Like Them.
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Are we having an opera gloves moment? For the past couple of seasons, I’ve been wondering. Long gloves were on runways at JW Anderson and Balenciaga last September, after all. They cropped up recently at the most-talked-about Paris shows, like Rocha’s highly anticipated return to the calendar, the always viral Vaquera, or trend-prophesying Miu Miu. And this Sunday at the Oscars, Carey Mulligan wore a 1950s Balenciaga gown with a long velvety black pair. On social media, the look was a clear winner of the night.
Still, opera gloves have never been part of my own style vocabulary, mostly because my hands already feel dressed up with my long acrylic nails. People always inquire how I can operate with three-inch pieces of oval-shaped plastic stuck to my nail beds, and I tell them it’s like my hands are wearing stilettos. They make me feel powerfully feminine—my fingertips glide across my keyboard like Carrie Bradshaw sprinting across Bleecker Street in Manolos.
Opera gloves have the same kind of effect. They’re beautiful but frivolous. There’s no real reason to wear decorative gloves for anything other than maybe a bit of warmth. But then again, Audrey Hepburn never looked warm in gloves. She just looked fabulous.
In an effort to see if gloves could help me harness the same womanly power as a good manicure, I spent the past six months or so trying to incorporate them into my everyday style. I wanted to start at Fashion Week last September, but the weather gods had different plans. In 90-plus-degree heat, I couldn’t make it more than an hour in a pair.
Also, styling them was a true challenge. I kept trying them on with little leather dresses and plaid miniskirts, but it felt too costume-y, too try-hard. I couldn’t get past the fear that I looked like a PG-rated punk-rock singer from a Disney Channel original movie, about to break out into a cover of Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi.” Gloves, as I discovered, are a high-maintenance accessory.
When the air finally got crisp, I took my gloves back out to give them another try. I had originally borrowed them from my mother, who sang in her own (very real, not PG-rated) rock band in the ’80s and wore them onstage with all-leather outfits. When I told her I had a hard time styling them the first time around, she laughed—the kind of laugh that sounds more like pity than delight. She told me, “Well, I’m not sure what advice to give because I’ve just never had that problem.”
Cool!
Taking a long, hard look at her photos, I realized that maybe I was being too serious. Gloves intimidated me. There is an undeniable elegant formality to them. They’re often seen at galas and worn with gowns. They’re de rigueur for white-tie events! When I asked a handful of friends how they would describe them, every single one used the word formal. And despite “quiet luxury” being a thing, formal is just not the way that people dress right now. Instead, there’s more of an emphasis on the individual than the traditional.
Yet the contradictory thing about this obsession with telegraphing our personality through our style is that people have become hyperaware of how they will be perceived differently based on the way they put together an outfit. And so somehow, some of the people obsessed with personality have unwittingly become averse to the riskier, zany pieces that might insinuate they actually have one. Gloves are the kind of accessory that talk for you, and it’s not hard to see why some are intimidated by what they may say.
My mom never looked formal in gloves. Instead, she looked hot and mysterious. She looked so self-possessed, it was contagious. I felt more confident in myself just looking at a colorless two-dimensional photo of her in them.
And that assured energy is why I felt drawn to them on recent runways. At the Row’s Spring 2024 show, they told a story of a woman moving with haste who still couldn’t leave the house without her go-to pair. At Balenciaga, they have become a part of the house’s visual vocabulary, so much so that seeing a Demna gown styled without them feels unnatural.
At JW Anderson, gloves felt like delicious red cherries on top of deceptively simple all-black looks. The models wearing them didn’t look like they were in costume or going to a buttoned-up event. Instead the gloves felt like extensions of their personalities and the fabulous lives they were living.
So instead of overthinking, I thought maybe I would just stop thinking entirely. I slipped the gloves on with button-up tops that felt too professional. I found they punched up all-white outfits in a way that knocked off the bridal edge. I leaned into the slightly punk-rock look of it all. But mostly, I felt really hot with my fingertips dipped in metallic gel powder and my wrists wrapped in lace.
Wearing them wasn’t always easy. My long nails made the tips comically pointy. I had to take them off to do anything, like text or unbutton my jeans or even pet my dog. I wasted more time than I’d like to admit putting on my Cartier watch over one glove, only to have to remove it every single time I wanted to do something other than exist, basically. And yet, it was worth it.
The decadent delight of gloves is that they’re a little bit silly and also ritualistic. They’ve become a symbol of dated formalities and hot rock ’n’ roll stage presence. And when so much of style right now feels like a color-by-numbers code people are trying to crack, off-kilter quirks are refreshing. It’s exciting to stumble a little and feel a little stumped, and then find a schtick that might actually stick.
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