In popular culture, probably the best-known images incorporating opera gloves are those of Rita Hayworth in Gilda (1946) Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Cinderella from Disney's 1950 film Cinderella and Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. They are sometimes worn by entertainers such as can-can dancers and burlesque performers in particular during the performance of a Gown-and-glove striptease. Opera gloves continue to be popular accessories for bridal, prom, debutante, and quinceañera gowns and at very formal ballroom dances (white opera gloves are still mandatory for female debutantes at the Vienna Opera Ball ). They have enjoyed minor revivals in fashion design on several occasions, being popular in haute couture collections in the late 2000s. The opera glove has enjoyed varying popularity in the decades since World War I, being most prevalent as a fashion accessory in the 1940s through the early 1960s, but continues to this day to be popular with women who want to add a particularly elegant touch to their formal attire. Marilyn Monroe wearing evening gloves in 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' According to several fashion historians, over-the-elbow gloves were re-popularized during the late 19th century by actresses Sarah Bernhardt in France (to disguise what she considered her overly thin arms) and Lillian Russell in the United States. Etiquette considered gloves to be mandatory accessories for both men and women of the upper classes, so it was uncommon to see a well-dressed woman at a public occasion who was not wearing gloves of some sort.

During that period, they were standard for both daytime and evening wear even some swimming costumes were accessorized with opera gloves. Over-the-elbow gloves were first widely popular during the Regency/ Napoleonic period (circa 1800–1825), and waned in popularity during the early and mid-Victorian periods (circa 1830–1870), but enjoyed their greatest vogue in the last two decades of the 19th century and the years of the 20th century prior to the start of World War I. While the etymology of the term opera glove is unknown, gloves of above-the-elbow length have been worn since at least the late 18th century, and gloves reaching to or just below the elbow have been worn by women in Western countries since the 17th century in an extant engraving of England's Queen Mary dating from the 1690s she is shown wearing elbow-length gloves.

White satin opera gloves