Jenna Ortega Wears 6,500-Crystal Elias Matso Dress at Klara and the Sun Premiere

Jenna Ortega treated the New York premiere of Klara and the Sun like a fashion-school showcase, and honestly, it worked. The Wednesday star, who also broke out in Scream and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, plays Klara in the new sci-fi drama. She turned up in a corset dress straight from a graduate thesis collection.

The designer is Elias Matso, and the dress comes from “Melt with Me,” his final collection for his Fashion Design degree at Polimoda. It’s built from cotton coutil and viscose jersey, with hand-cut, tipped steel spiral boning holding the corseted shape. Then comes the shiny part: about 6,500 crystal beads, each one mounted on galvanized steel wire. Enrique Melendez styled the look.

The idea behind it is more thoughtful than you’d expect from a premiere dress. Polimoda says the collection is about the feeling of melting, both emotional and physical, something you feel inside that also shows on the surface. Matso also looked at aging and what it does to the body, which is a little funny, since corsets are supposed to hold all that in. He pointed to a vase on his inspiration board, saying we pour ourselves into these shapes to keep things up, and end up more fluid anyway.

At the premiere, Jenna posed with her co-star Amy Adams, who plays Josie’s mother, and director Taika Waititi. The film is based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel. It follows Klara, a companion android, as she tries to bond with a sick girl in a world split by genetic engineering. It had its first screening at the BFI London Film Festival on October 15, where Jenna’s honey-gold Torlowei look turned heads. It opens in US theaters on October 23.

This is the second premiere look in a row that played with the whole dress-as-art idea. Jenna also wore a yellow and white Calvin Klein top in London around the same time.