Angela Bassett's AFI Fest Dress: Christian Siriano Wings — Plus Peyton Elizabeth Lee's Color-Blocked Look and Awkwafina in Taller Marmo at the Wildwood Premiere

AFI Fest's 40th edition opened Wednesday with the U.S. premiere of LAIKA's Wildwood at the TCL Chinese Theatre, and the cast used the carpet for three very different takes on eveningwear.

AFI Fest's 40th edition opened October 21, 2026, with the U.S. premiere of LAIKA's stop-motion epic Wildwood at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, and the cast's red carpet looks ranged from architectural to deliberately casual. Angela Bassett wore a custom gown from Christian Siriano's Fall 2026 ready-to-wear collection, built from sheer fabric set against black velvet, with a gravity-defying neckline shaped to echo butterfly wings and botanical detailing worked into the design. She completed the look with an embellished butterfly clutch by Judith Leiber and David Webb earrings, styled by Jennifer Austin.

Peyton Elizabeth Lee, who voices the film's lead character Prue McKeel, took a different approach entirely: a Rosie Assoulin look pairing a red cropped top with a floor-length grey maxi skirt featuring a statement back. It was a notably more casual starting point than a traditional gown for a studio's U.S. premiere, and a contrast to the shimmering chartreuse strapless gown she wore to Wildwood's earlier London Film Festival premiere earlier this month — two very different interpretations of eveningwear for the same film's rollout, roughly a week and a half apart.

Awkwafina, who also voices a role in the film, wore Taller Marmo, pairing a blue skirt with a textured, oversized overlay. Jacob Tremblay and Amandla Stenberg also walked the carpet, with Stenberg in a lace Zimmermann dress with waist detailing.

Why this event matters beyond the outfits

Wildwood has become one of the most-discussed films of the fall for reasons that have nothing to do with fashion — it opened to a rare 100% critics' score, the first perfect Rotten Tomatoes rating in LAIKA's history, after sixteen years in development. That makes AFI Fest's opening-night slot more than a routine premiere: it's the kind of high-visibility, award-season-adjacent event where stylists tend to push harder than they would for a standard junket stop, which is a reasonable part of why Wednesday's carpet produced three such distinct silhouettes from one film's cast on one night.

Original coverage: Angela Bassett Wears Christian Siriano to AFI Fest's Wildwood Premiere