Why Carrie Coon Feels Like Her “Coolest Self” at the 2026 Tony Awards

When Carrie Coon earned her debut Tony Awards nomination in 2013 for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the red carpet was hers to handle alone.

“Those first Tonys were my first big public anything, when I was nominated for Virginia Woolf,“ Coon tells Marie Claire. And at the time, she didn’t have a stylist on speed-dial or runway connections. “I recall I went to one of the vintage fashion houses and borrowed a dress from the 1930s, and I bought my own vintage jewelry from some little shop on the street, and got shoes at a shoe store.”

A lot has changed since then—in terms of Coon’s résumé and the fashion she’s sampled along the way. She’s gone on to star in critically acclaimed series like The Leftovers, The Gilded Age, and The White Lotus; she’s racked up prestigious awards-season nods at every major ceremony (plus a 2016 Critics’ Choice win). In conversation ahead of the 2026 Tonys, where she was once again a Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play nominee for Bug, she could see how her fashion person credentials have evolved, without losing any of her personality in the process.

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Coon has spent her latest awards season run working with stylist Alicia Lombardini—a partnership that’s boosted her confidence and resulted in some runway-exclusive pulls. “She always makes me feel like myself, just the coolest version of myself. I’m so grateful to have a partner navigating that with me because, boy, it is not in my DNA.” (To prove her point, Coon mentions shopping for homecoming dresses with her grandmother as a teen—and that her mother would wear her hospital scrubs from shifts as an ER nurse to weddings.)

Coon’s 2026 Tonys red carpet dress is the aesthetic opposite of her vintage debut thirteen years ago. She wanted to lean into a more androgynous, structural look for her gown, one that could complement her fresh pixie cut. “You have to find the right energy to play off short hair,” she says.

The first dress Lombardini sourced for Coon was the ultimate winner: a high-neck Altuzarra gown with a gravity-defying pannier skirt and a completely open back. “It has a bit of a tuxedo energy, but it also has this incredible trapezoidal sculptural element to it that makes it feel more modern and more architectural,” Coon says. “The cut of it is actually really sexy. It’s not a conservative dress.”

Coon and Lombardini weren’t letting the night’s formality get in the way of having fun with their red carpet select. “I mean, it is the Tony Awards—it’s not the Oscars,” she laughs. “There’s a bit of theatricality that is welcome in this environment that we’re always eager to lean into.”

Her tuxedo dress is, after all, a twist on a Broadway staple. “The theater’s been around forever, so it plays on the vocabulary of that fashion, and yet it’s also playing against it in a very playful and modern way.” Wire-rimmed MYKITA glasses and an IWC watch were her way of balancing out the dress’s center-stage energy.

The way Coon describes it, this year’s dress celebrates more than her latest nomination. It’s a symbol of how her relationship with fashion has transformed since that first Tonys nod.