“It’s interesting that the red carpet has become synonymous with movie stars who in a sense have become the royalty of today,” Sonnet Stanfill, senior curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum, tells BBC Culture. “The evolution of the picture house in the second half of the 20th Century made them the palaces of the people. There’s a certain synergy about the red carpet – that was traditionally to welcome royalty – now welcoming film royalty.”