How Emma Stone Pulled Off Understated Glamour and a Big Win at the Oscars 2024

When a visibly overwhelmed Emma Stone took the stage at the Oscars 2024 ceremony, it was only fitting that the back zipper of her dress had, too, succumbed to the excitement. At the seams of perfection, humanity peeks through. Stone, accepting the best-actress award for her role in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, stood in wide-eyed awe of the women in her midst. First, she acknowledged the previous winners onstage. “You all are incredible,” she gushed to the group that included Jessica Lange, Sally Field, and Michelle Yeoh. Next came this year’s fellow nominees. “Sandra, Annette, Carey, Lily,” Stone said, swiveling to lock eyes with Killers of the Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone, “I share this with you.” The remaining woman on the Oscar winner’s mind wasn’t in the room but rather onscreen: the insatiable sprite Bella Baxter, a role Stone called “the gift of a lifetime.” The actor might have been the one to breathe life into that Frankensteinian character—the toddler-phase tantrums giving way to ecstasies of “furious jumping”—but Bella’s existence was a collective effort. “It’s about a team that came together to make something greater than the sum of its parts,” Stone told the audience. “And that is the best part about making movies, is all of us together.”

Hairstylist Mara Roszak, comb jauntily at the ready, preps Stone ahead of the Oscars. Polaroid film and Rōz hair products are day-of essentials. 

Courtesy of Mara Roszak.

Earlier on Sunday afternoon, a similar familial spirit ran through the hotel room where Stone was getting ready with hairstylist Mara Roszak, stylist Petra Flannery, and makeup artist Rachel Goodwin—a trusted triumvirate that has worked with the actor for some 17 years. “It’s such a joy,” Roszak said by phone after Stone departed for the red carpet. “I don’t know what I’ve done in this life to deserve such a collaborator, but it’s incredible. She really allows for so much creative freedom.” 

Roszak’s arsenal includes GHD hot tools, a coral hairbrush by La Bonne Brosse, and the latest Rōz launch, the Air Thickening Spray. A Rimowa case keeps everything in check.

Courtesy of Mara Roszak.

The Academy Awards marked the celebratory finish to a spirited few months of press, beginning with December’s premiere. On the wardrobe front, with help from Louis Vuitton’s custom atelier, Stone cycled between ornate decoration (a slinky dress with beaded feathers for the SAG Awards) and exaggerated shape (a Victoriana puffed sleeve for the BAFTAs). The hair similarly swung from undone chignon to easygoing blowout—the subtlest of nods to a neo-Gothic film that saw Bella adventure from ocean liner to brothel in three-foot-long extensions. (Both the Poor Things costume designer, Holly Waddington, and Nadia Stacey, who oversaw its hair, makeup, and prosthetics design, took home awards.) “We’ve really covered so many different shapes and styles,” says Roszak of the awards-season beauty moments, “and throughout we’ve kept Bella, her character, really in mind—everything quite youthful and very fresh, with a kind of modern approach.”

Bella Baxter, in Poor Things, brims with unbridled energy, as seen in her hip-grazing hair and eccentric fashion choices.

Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Stone’s Oscars look continued that play of contrasts. The mint green Louis Vuitton brought the eye-catching volume down to the waist, with an umbrella-like peplum. Roszak’s direction for hair was polished but loose. “We decided that we wanted it to be quite clean, off her chest, high shine,” Roszak says of the swept-back waves paired with an architectural center part. As for her tools of the trade, she keeps an edited kit. “I’m using all Rōz products, which is really fun now because we’ve expanded the range enough to where I have pretty much everything I could need—including lab samples, which I obviously can’t yet talk about,” she says of her three-year-old hair care brand (pronounced rose). “The Rōz Root Lift Spray and the Air Thickening Spray are really the hero products because I need Emma’s hair to hold,” she says. The former boosts volume at the scalp; the latter, spritzed through the lengths, builds grip without stickiness. Roszak then set Stone’s hair in large Velcro rollers while Goodwin worked her magic: ultra-fresh skin and a peachy pink lip (Charlotte Tilbury’s K.I.S.S.I.N.G. lipstick in the shade 90s Pink, topped with the soon-to-launch Pillow Talk Big Lip Plumpgasm—talk about a product name Bella would support). To finish, Roszak teased the crown and used a GHD 1.25” curling iron to shape the hair away from Stone’s face. A quick rake of the Rōz Santa Lucia oil lent a parting glow.