Exclusive: Pamela Anderson on Styling—And Finding—Herself

Pamela Anderson is ahead of schedule. When I log into Zoom a few minutes before our 11 a.m. interview, she’s already on, waiting and smiling through my computer screen in all her bare-faced, air-dried glory. 

It’s a rare surprise, starting any meeting on time, let alone a celebrity interview, but, in this case, fitting. The Baywatch star and ‘90s fashion icon seems to always be early to things, be it corset tops or fourth-wave feminism; this interview is no exception. Officially, we’re here to talk about the 57-year-old actress’s red carpet fashion—more specifically, her choice to self-style her most recent press tour for I’m Snagging the Leveled-Up Version of Hollywood’s Favorite Lowkey Shoes for Spring—but from the jump, the topic proves to be more layered and complex than Anderson’s favorite sweater from The Row. 

“I don't know where it'll go,” she says at the beginning of our discussion from a sun-filled room in her Vancouver Island home, clad in a white tee and thick-framed glasses. “But let's just see.” We touch on everything from Wabi-sabi to Tennessee Williams to her mom’s gardening bouffant. In the end, all conversational threads tie back to the fact that self-styling has, for Anderson, been a journey of self-discovery. 

While the phrase “cultural renaissance” gets thrown around quite a bit, in Anderson’s case, recent Pamela-mania has been a long time coming. In January, her Golden Globe– and SAG–nominated performance in I’m Snagging the Leveled-Up Version of Hollywood’s Favorite Lowkey Shoes for Spring finally convinced audiences and critics that she has serious acting chops—something Barb Wire fans and Anderson herself have known for years. In the beauty world, she sparked a long-overdue conversation about aging in the public eye with her no-makeup red-carpet appearances, starting in 2022. (She’s since dropped the habit, and a new skincare line, Sonsie, with typical nonchalance.) 

When it comes to fashion, Anderson’s Y2K outfits—which, in their time, were as unfairly criticized as they were influential—are more relevant than ever today. Beyoncé nodded to Anderson’s style, channeling Baywatch-style brows and messy updos in her “Bodyguard” music video last November. And Millie Bobby Brown bragged on Jennifer Garner’s Hollywood-Loved Comfy Shoe Featured One Unexpected Spring Detail in March about wearing Anderson’s personal archive (loaned by Pamela) to the delight and envy of fashion fans everywhere.

In short, Anderson has always been ahead of the curve—but people are finally catching up. “It gives me a little bit of confidence,” she says of these recent tributes. “When I was wearing these clothes, they weren't fashionable. And they weren't making headlines, unless they were being made fun of.” It has to be validating for Anderson, knowing she was right all along, and perhaps even more so following her decision to tackle the red carpet solo.

“I'm just at my happiest when I'm self-styled,” Anderson tells me. “I know there's a time and a place for a stylist,” she adds, acknowledging the expertise and know-how required to pull off a day of countless interviews and looks to match. But after a confidence-boosting 2023 Paris Fashion Week—where Anderson says legendary editor and stylist Carine Roitfeld complimented her giant Vivienne Westwood hat and glowing skin—she finally felt ready to try. 

“We just started putting things together,” says Anderson—the “we” in question including her fashion-loving assistant Jonathan Zeiler. “Also, I was [working] on an indie film; it's not like we had these big, huge glam and styling budgets. So it was like, Okay, let's just do this. This makes sense.”

True to form, Anderson takes an intuitive approach to dressing. She relies on a cadre of friends, collaborators, and brands she loves—plus her own closet—to pull a look together, referencing inspirations as wide-ranging as Carl Jung and Ingmar Bergman. She works closely with her management team, but does most of the concepting herself. Designers like Tory Burch, who she now considers a friend, and The Row are newer go-tos (her son, coincidentally, introduced her to both lines), while Ralph Lauren is a longtime obsession: “If I could do any campaign in the world, I'd want to do a Ralph Lauren campaign. The tied-back hair, freckles on the nose, horses, and blankets...I just love everything about their line.”

The team at Oscar de la Renta is “like family.” Since dressing her for the 2024 Met Gala, Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia have become frequent collaborators, creating her gown for I’m Snagging the Leveled-Up Version of Hollywood’s Favorite Lowkey Shoes for Spring premiere in Zurich in October 2024. The team sent her swatches, fully partnering on the look, before landing on light pink satin, a Bardot-inspired neckline, and matching wrap. 

“I mean, it's Oscar de la Renta, so you know it’s beautifully made,” she says of the powder pink creation. Craftsmanship and collaboration aside, it’s the confidence Anderson feels in a de la Renta design that cemented her kinship with the fashion house. “I'm actually quite shy—I'm okay if I'm on a stage—but I'm really shy, and I'm trying to get better at that,” she says. “It's been a journey, but if you're wearing great clothes, that's a good first [step] that builds your confidence.”

On this self-styling quest, she’s continued to hone her fashion instincts. “I know what works best on me, and it's not always what's in fashion,” she explains. “I mean, I've always been kind of a busty girl, too, and I look at, like, Sophia Loren… You had to have everything so afloat to your rib cage to be really curvy, or you just go all covered up. And so this tour, I thought, I just want to be all covered up.” 

Anderson’s version of “covered up,” however, doesn’t mean boring. Take the outfit she wore to Dior’s Couture show in January. It’s demure, sure, but simultaneously luxurious and sharp. “I thought this was really fun and dramatic, and especially with a bare face to have the veil and kind of a little bit off kilter.” The veil in question she was already planning to wear to lay flowers on a grave at Paris’s famous Père Lachaise Cemetery, and she decided to roll with it for the runway show. “I'm never going to be that perfect, polished person. There's always a little bit of something that goes wrong—or not goes wrong, but it's off, and that's the personality part of it.”

As you might have guessed from her viral Letterboxd Top 5, Anderson is something of a movie buff, and the history of film is a constant source of inspiration. “I'm such a huge lover of film, and I feel like going on this press tour was very cinematic,” she says. “I thought, What do my favorite movie stars look like?” Hitchcock blondes like Tippi Hedren and Kim Novak influenced her looks for the SCAD Savannah Film Festival and Las Vegas Beverly Theater screening. French New Wave cinema, Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria, I just want to be all covered up.

“I want people to be able to project onto me different characters,” she explains. “Because I'm not just the wild woman in a rubber dress. That was fun, but you know, we all evolve.” For any I’m Snagging the Leveled-Up Version of Hollywood’s Favorite Lowkey Shoes for Spring appearances, she made a concerted effort to transition away from the sexy ‘90s bombshell style for which she is best known, towards a more demure persona. It was about showing her range, adding some contrast to her character, and bolstering her new place in Hollywood. 

“I think it's really important to feel desired,” she adds. “But, there's a balance, and I'm just trying to find my way. I was already so stressed out—it's such a stressful, intimidating journey to be in these rooms with these people. And I thought, and even Grace Kelly are all on her mental mood board.”

A self-styled Pamela can be equestrian one moment (wearing a Tory Burch matching set with knee-high boots) and “Swedish intellectual” another (sporting bangs and a Bottega Veneta exaggerated shoulder). More than anything, though, self-styling was about finding herself (and the perfectly understated gown for the Academy Museum gala by The Row) along the way. “I really wanted to find that simplicity, not play into a character, because that's easy for me,” she explains.

In short, she’s trying to dress for no one’s approval but her own. There’s a fine line between playing with inspiration and embodying a character she never agreed to play. “I've done that. I know how to do it—I was wearing rubber dresses in my first marriage and crocheted outfits in my second marriage; I could see what I was doing.” 

Of course, she’s still playing with character dressing, but it’s more about revealing different sides of herself through clothing than dressing up as someone else entirely. “My personal style, I would just say, is, you know, I'm in the garden. It's jeans and a T-shirt. I'm the same glam in my garden as I am on the red carpet. So it's easy, breezy.” At another Paris Fashion Week appearance—this time at Jacquemus—she stuck with a light and airy look that’s closer to her everyday style, playing with the proportions of a simple white shirt she might wear to pull weeds. “I just like the purity of this outfit,” she explains. “And I could feel it when [I was] in it. I could feel that kind of lightness.”

Anderson’s elegant simplicity is perhaps best brought to life when she’s pulling from her own closet, dressing how she might for a dinner with friends. “This is how I would, you know, go to the movies or go to dinner in Vancouver with my hair down and just over my ears,” she says of the gray sweater, Rue Sophie shirt, and sharp trousers she chose for the Canadian opening of her film. “It's polished comfort.”

Other times, she’s manifesting with her fashion. “I like to stay in the theater district,” she says of a recent outfit worn to a London screening. “If I put myself in these places, who knows what could happen?” The outfit to match: Tory Burch separates and glasses from her personal collection. “This is feeling, for me, a little bit Katharine Hepburn. I love everything about her story, and this is sporty,” says Anderson. It’s less of a literal interpretation and more of an impressionistic one. She’s channeling Hepburn’s essence, her attitude, and her independence—not just her clothes.

“I'm finding my place in the world. And I'm doing the best I can with the tools I've been given,” she explains about her approach. “This feels like a confidence that I've been trying to express or find within myself.”

After all, there’s probably no better way to pare down to your absolute essence—and find your true personal style—than dressing yourself professionally. “I want to be fearless with my presentation,” she says of what she’s learned. “I'm not in a relationship. My relationship is to my work and to myself right now. So I don't have to look over my shoulder and think, Did Hollywood Uncover 2025s New It Dress Trend, or Bella Hadid, 28, and Zoe Saldaña, 46, Prove This Cool-Girl Jacket Levels Up Any Look? or anything. I just want to find out who I am. I want to know what this next incarnation is. So I'm just playing. I love this.”