Costume

Red Carpet season continues, with the awards show that decides it’s time to introduce a ManiCam so we can intensely scrutinize even the cuticles of our chosen royalty! It’s the awards show that dares to ask, Who will award actors if actors don’t award actors? And last night, the Screen Actors Guild answered that call, in an awards show for which actresses and stylist teams seemed determined to look fancy, yet confused and weirdly uncomfortable! However, after a brief misstep in a particularly haute-couture velvet lump at the Golden Globes, Marion Cotillard manages to buck both the Confused and Weirdly Uncomfortable trends by pulling off a dress that, on anyone else, would look like a white bustier and hastily-gathered curtain, and looks insouciantly chic on her. “Oh, this old thing?” she’s asking, slipping her hands into those pockets. “It’s just a casual waterfall of blue-tinged green ballgown silk that brings out my eyes and somehow sells the high-low hemline despite all the odds against it.” Welp, fashion case closed. However, the case against some of… Read more »

Awards Season is ON. Now begins the parade of celebrities carefully dressed in borrowed finery that will go along with a desired public image plotted more carefully than a John le Carre novel. Every awards season, in general, usually has a vaguely-cohesive feel to it, as recent runway trends get condensed to their sparkly essence, alongside the usual standard silhouettes. The Golden Globes, being the first “big one,” is sort of a barometer for the season we can all look forward to. Last year was a year of Full Baffle, in which everyone made terrible decisions. Let’s find out how the wind is blowing this year, starting with the awards show where people are allowed to get drunk all night right at their tables instead of flasking it in the bathrooms during commercials! And speaking of feeling a little drunk: Lucy Liu, you’re up. This look gives me pangs in my heart, and here’s why: it starts with perfect hair and makeup, and a silhouette that’s very modern-Marie-Antoinette in an unfussy way, which I adore… Read more »

The Byzantine luxury-turf war that is the red carpet came alive last night for the Emmys! Sometimes, a clear trend rules the red carpet, and everyone shows in shimmering beige and you have to sort them out based on a Martha Stewart paint chips with names like Tawny Lint. Not so this time! This was a year of so many trends that nobody knew quite what to do, except some people who looked amazing, and some other people who accepted bad advice by stylists who were probably secretly paid out by enemy factions. One of those people put Michelle Dockery in this dress: Even though it had been wadded up in their trunk for a week first. But we’ll get there. First, some sartorial delight!… Read more »

Fashion meta-prom happened, you guys! The Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute Gala is the magical event when the inner workings of the fashion world and the film world squeeze together tightly enough to make one night of glorious, spangly sausage. This year a little scandalous to start with, given that the unspoken theme was apparently “Backhanded Compliment Retrospective”: The spring 2012 exhibition organized by The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art is Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations. The exhibition, on view from May 10 through August 19, 2012 (preceded on May 7 by The Costume Institute Gala Benefit), explores the striking affinities between these two Italian designers from different eras. With a sidebar exhibit of shade-throwing: …Mrs. Prada confirmed that she admires the total curatorial independence of the museum to the extent that they almost did not take into consideration her vision. [insert sassy/popcorn .gif of choice] But shade or sun, the show must go on! As the past has proved, the thing about the Met Gala that sets it apart from other red… Read more »

Here we are, at the close of the awards season, in which stylists, designers, managers, PR assistants, and actors perform a complicated series of communiques about style and photography and interior trussing, like the intricate dancing of bees, and as mysterious and inexplicable to those of us who can only look at the end result and marvel that, because of mixed metaphors, some of our finest actors have pollinated this season’s crops. Also, they wore dresses, and though in general the level of success was high, Bafflement is still waiting around every corner, covered in chiffon and ready to strike. Outfit of the Night: Whatever Tilda Swinton was wearing at home. Actual Red-Carpet Outfit of the Night: Anne-Sophie Bion, editor of The Artist, because she said, “You know, people always say that I could wear a garbage bag and look good, and I feel there’s no better testing ground for that than the red carpet of the Academy Awards, so I am just going to get a really long garbage bag, Project Runway it with… Read more »