If you thought you’d seen the last of Emma Roberts, joke’s on you — the actress and producer has been busier than ever lately. Her year is stacked with projects, like her Belletrist book club, which led to a successful Hulu adaptation of Tell Me Lies, and a recent rom-com called Maybe I Do. Soon, she’ll star in Space Cadet, in which she plays a party-girl raver tasked with saving the NASA space program. (“She’s a little bit raver, a little bit Florida, and she makes her own clothing. I think everyone’s gonna have a lot of fun seeing those outfits,” Roberts says of her character.) On top of her film and television plans for the year, she’s the new face of Saks Fifth Avenue’s spring fashion campaign.
One of her campaign “duties” included hosting a fabulous function. Saks’ New York Fashion Week kickoff party was a glitzy affair held at Hotel Aman’s sultry jazz bar, and the room, scented with layers of luxe perfumes and many glasses of Champagne, was full of style icons like Julia Fox and Sasha Velour. The night opened with performances by Charli XCX and Big Freedia and concluded with pizza, caviar, and a high-energy DJ set from the very fashionable, very talented Alice Longyu Gao. Before diving into the evening’s festivities, Roberts spoke to the Cut about how her personal style influenced the Saks campaign: “To get to do a campaign and look like yourself and give people a peek into your life is really fun.”
Spring weather can be unpredictable. What are your favorite transitional pieces that will carry you through a full day of changing temperatures?
I love a coat that can transition from winter to spring. There’s some from Ganni that I really like; Isabel Marant always does a great job. I also feel like leopard is a great transitional print because anything leopard can look fall, it can look spring. Even last night, I was wearing a long black vintage dress, and I put on Wolford leopard tights under it. They peeked out a little and it totally made the outfit. Tights are a fun way to do a little pop of leopard. And then I have this leopard Valentino bag that was a gift that I absolutely love. It makes any outfit look a little more elevated.
Do you have other go-to patterns or styles?
I think you can’t go wrong with a little striped T-shirt or a striped cashmere sweater. I have one from Kule that I live in and love. It’s harder than it seems to find the perfect stripe! So the perfect stripe with a light-wash denim and a loafer is just very springy, very Audrey Hepburn. Put on a red lip and call it a day.
Your partnership with Saks for its spring fashion campaign has such a range of fun looks — what inspired you there?
Saks wanted to do a campaign that revolves around stuff I actually wear and love. All of the outfits revolved around parts of my life that are important to me — working, being a mom. I thought it would be really fun to give people a peek into my Saks closet, since all of the pieces I was wearing are pieces that I own or want to own or just really love. Sometimes when you hear “campaign,” you think, Okay, are they gonna want me to cut my hair or dye my eyebrows or look like someone else? To get to do a campaign and look like yourself and give people a peek into your life is really fun.
One of your early films, Wild Child, emphasizes how important wardrobe choices are in building a character. That character, Poppy, also feels like a precursor to your later TV roles on Scream Queens and American Horror Story. Does wardrobe influence how you get into the headspace to play those roles?
It definitely does. I can also tell you that the blue-and-cream Gucci coat that I wore as Poppy in Wild Child, in the scene where she arrives at the school, I still have in storage. I went home with that coat. I was 16, and I was like, “Oh my God, a Gucci coat.” I never wore it because it was too special, it was just in my closet. When I look at it, it brings me back to London when I was 16 years old. Now that it’s streaming, people come up to me who are teenagers now, and they’re like, “I just saw your new movie Wild Child.” I was 16 in that and I’m 32 now. It makes me so happy that the movie has stood the test of time, that people are still discovering it and loving it and it’s still feeling like new to them.
Your recently starred in the romantic comedy Maybe I Do, and there’s been a little bit of a much-needed rom-com revival in recent years. Are you a fan of the genre when you’re not acting in one?
I love rom-coms. The good ones are few and far between, so to get to be a part of ones that I love is amazing. I love Holidate — I remember being so obsessed with that script. I was so happy I got to do that, as well as Maybe I Do and About Fate. I just love movies that make me feel good and can make other people feel good. Especially over the last few years, every time you turn on the news, it’s just more depressing information, so to get to live in a fantasy and bring everybody along … why not? We could all use a little romance and a little escape.
Okay, one last throwback: I have to tell you that Aquamarine was one of my favorite movies growing up and still is. So many iconic fashion moments. What was it like making that movie?
So much fun. I was 14 when I left to go do that movie in Australia, and I turned 15 on the plane. I’d never been to Australia and it felt so surreal. I loved every second of it, and that’s another one that makes me so happy that people just still love it. People come up to me all the time about it. I always am like, how can we revive Wild Child or Aquamarine? I think about it all the time now that I’m producing.
An Aquamarine sequel would be my dream.
I’m so down. People have said it over the years, but now it’s actually been so long that it would be really interesting to bring the girls back together. And I love Sara Paxton and JoJo. I’ve followed what they’ve done since and I just adore them both. So I don’t think a sequel is out of the question — but it’s obviously not up to me.