Joey King’s See-Through Paper Clip Top Was So Sci-Fi Chic

Method acting is officially passé — it’s the golden age of method dressing now. Hollywood’s chicest found a way to make their press circuits multi-layered. Instead of merely showing up to promote projects, they now dress like them too. From Blake Lively dressing like a garden à la her It Ends With Us character, to Zendaya accessorizing with literal tennis balls on her Challengers press tour, stars know that audiences love a theme.

It’s also become a way to flaunt fashion prowess. Sure, anyone can wear the latest looks off the runways. But building a narrative? That takes skill. Just ask Joey King, the latest star to join the method dressing crew.

While most stars reserve motif-driven outfits on their official projects’ events, King got a bit of a head-start. At the star-studded Variety’s 2024 Power of Young Hollywood fête, she sartorially nodded to her new film Uglies, the Netflix adaptation of Scott Westerfeld’s ‘00s dystopian sci-fi book series.

Joey’s Metallic Top

On Thursday, Aug. 8, King walked the event’s red carpet with fellow attendees Sabrina Carpenter and Sadie Sink. While many went the glam route, the Kissing Booth alum chose an edgier, more brutalist aesthetic. For good reason, too. (More on that later.)

King donned a black pantsuit with the usual elements: a boxy blazer with rolled-up sleeves paired with loose, tapered trousers. It was what was underneath the blazer, however, that was far from common. Instead of a typical vest or blouse, she wore a top completely made out of oversized paper clips. The metallic masterpiece was also entirely sheer, flaunting her lack of lingerie underneath.

She paired the black and silver look with vertiginous platform pumps.

Bookworms Know: The Metal Allusion

If you’ve read the books, you’ll know metal is a recurring theme throughout the Uglies trilogy, which follows Tally (King), an “Ugly,” as the regime forces her (and the rest of the 16-year-olds) to undergo surgery to be a “Pretty.”

Despite beauty mattering in the dystopian society, their locale is extremely brutalist. So when Tally’s friend stumbles upon a stash of metal in the next books, it becomes a valuable resource that could also be extremely dangerous.

King choosing to wear metal to the event, in lieu of, well, fabric, was absolutely intentional.

Her “Smoke”-y Makeup

Even her makeup was a subtle nod to the movie’s plot. In the novel, there’s a group called The Smoke, runaways (aka The Smokeys) who defect from the rulers’ surgical mandates.

Naturally, King didn’t miss an opportunity to rock a smokey shadow, with a defined cat-eye. To help her eye makeup pop, she left the rest of her face bare and let her blonde hair hang loose in beachy waves.

She Twinned With Her Sister

The night turned out to be a family affair, with her sister Hunter walking the carpet beside her. While Hunter didn’t incorporate metal in her ensemble, she coordinated her ’fit with her younger sibling.

Channeling the black and silver motif, she wore a little black dress that featured unexpected cutouts and a textured plastic-like fringe trim.

Her crescent-shaped bag was coated in rhinestones, lending the piece a silver sheen similar to Joey’s.

Double the slayage.