(from left) Carolyn Murphy; Olivia Wilde and Jessica Chastain
Photo: (from left) Filippo Fior/InDigitalteam/GoRunway.com; Kevin Tachman

First, editors caught wind that model and actress Carolyn Murphy was going to be walking exclusively in today’s Calvin Klein Collection show. Then came word that actresses Olivia Wilde and Oscar-nominated Jessica Chastain would be sitting in designer Francisco Costa’s front row, too, and suddenly the buzz became a beat worth following. “It’s the only show I’m seeing,” said Wilde coolly amid the chaos backstage. “I wanted to see clothes that I know I’ll want to wear.” Of the delicate A-line dress from Costa’s spring collection that she chose for the occasion, Wilde said, “I love the materials—the black silk underpinning is so chic, simple, classic, elegant. Then this top layer—like a kind of cool sugar cage, I keep calling it—makes it sort of funky and new. It was the dress for me.” 

Chastain, in a rust-colored asymmetrical shift from the pre-fall collection, was quick to compare her look with the one she wore when she won the Golden Globe Award earlier this year for her performance in Zero Dark Thirty. “That dress was so incredible because it felt like a silhouette Rita Hayworth would wear, like it was from the forties or fifties, but he made it really modern. This dress,” she continued, gently touching the black leather belt cinched around her waist, “could be something from the sixties, but Francisco made it current. That’s what excites me about fashion. When a designer does that.”

Meanwhile, being dressed in the first of two looks that she’d wear down the runway—a wool flannel cross-back tank with a matching pleated skirt—Carolyn Murphy was battling a case of the butterflies. “I think it’s good to be nervous,” she said. After all, it’s been some time since she walked the “fifteen runways in each city” that the show’s stylist, Vogue’s Camilla Nickerson, reminded her of having done back in the day. “I’m just going to be thinking about my daughter’s face at the Valentine’s Day party we’re going to tonight,” Murphy said of her inner mantra. Later, as she closed the show in a tough midnight leather and engineered-lace dress with a soft gaze and gentle smile, it was clear that the loving thought was working.