Golden Globes: The Meaning of the Yellow Ribbons Worn by Attendees

Red carpets may be a chance to talk up current projects while wearing high-wattage fashion, but they’re also an opportunity for stars to express their support for vital issues — that’s why viewers of Sunday’s 2024 Golden Globe Awards are seeing some attendees wearing yellow ribbons at tonight’s ceremony.

J. Smith-Cameron of Succession and John Ortiz of American Fiction are among the stars who have arrived sporting a yellow ribbon to show support for the roughly 130 hostages who are still being held in captivity by Hamas since the terrorist organization attacked Israel on Oct. 7. The symbolic effort was organized by Bring Them Home, an Israeli hostage advocacy organization that has been working behind the scenes to supply the ribbons, and is being coordinated by Ashlee Margolis, founder of Beverly Hills-based branding agency The A List. While the Israeli hostages are the main focus of the effort, the hostages reportedly represent 30 nationalities.

The choice of yellow is rooted in the origins of the symbol. Yellow ribbons became a popular emblem of support during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, when 52 Americans were held in captivity in Tehran for 444 days. Worn on lapels and seen on front porches and trees across the U.S., the yellow ribbon became the most widely used symbol of bringing the hostages safely home.

Past red-carpet ribbon appearances have included blue ribbons at the 2022 and 2023 Academy Awards, organized by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Coalition to show support for, respectively, Ukraine and refugees around the globe, as well as red ribbons, first seen in 1991 as a symbol of HIV/AIDS awareness.

With concerns about possible protests in advance of the event, a Globes spokesperson said the organization was not involved in coordinating the ribbon effort. (Golden Globes producer Dick Clark Productions is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a joint venture between Penske Media Corporation and Eldridge that also owns The Hollywood Reporter.)