By ERIC WILSON
Published: February 25, 2008
HOLLYWOOD — The movie industry must have woken up from the writers’ strike with a rotten hangover, unable to even think about frivolous things like parties and frocks. It was such a buzz kill that quite a few of the actors on the red carpet at the Academy Awards looked as if they either couldn’t be bothered with fashion this year — so not superficial were they — or had dressed in the dark on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
The hits were few and the misses, well, seemed to be less a result of actresses who dare to risk the wrath of the fashion police (Tilda Swinton leading the charge in a shapeless black bolt of fabric that appeared to be designed by the House of Hefty) than a general sense of red carpet malaise.
“I think a lot of people are being safe,” Kimora Lee Simmons, usually a fashion extrovert, commented on the E! channel. “Safe to me reads like boring.”
Certainly the stars deserved some leeway, but you would think that after months of Hollywood gloom and doom, the fashion would have been a little more upbeat. Instead, there seemed to be only two choices — wear red and be seriously appropriate or wear black and be appropriately serious.
The first camp belonged to Katherine Heigl in an Escada one-shoulder dress, Ruby Dee in a satin belted dress and jacket by Kevan Hall, Miley Cyrus in suitably youthful Valentino and Anne Hathaway in a stunner from Marchesa with a sash of red rosettes. The serious crowd included Amy Ryan in a flat (actually navy) Calvin Klein toga and Jennifer Garner, in embroidered silk taffeta from Oscar de la Renta. Few women wore big jewels — a sign of the sober mood — except for those dressed in black, but then they had to try harder just to be noticed as present.
Nevertheless, shown against a backdrop of gray clouds, the black dresses looked so similar that it hardly seemed worth checking the labels. That wasn’t the case for two women who wore purple: Cate Blanchett looked radiant in a satin gown with a plunging neckline that was accented with green beads, matching her earrings; and Jessica Alba wore a draped Marchesa gown that was tipped with a bit of froth.
There were also some shocking moments, the kind of loopy flubs that modern advancements in the profession of fashion styling had all but done away with years ago. Ms. Swinton, bless her Dobby the House Elf-loving heart, will most likely wake up with a few bruises tomorrow for her dress (from Lanvin), and Marion Cotillard, the French (and normally chic) actress from “La Vie en Rose,” wore a mermaid gown from Jean Paul Gaultier that was unsubtly printed with fish scales. Get it?
But the biggest faux pas tended to come from the other side of the hedgerows edging the carpet, where the commentators were climbing over one another to fawn and gawk and gently probe. On ABC, George Pennacchio must have been overwhelmed by his encounter with Heidi Klum, in a red dress with a picture-frame neckline and a woodlike bun of hair on her head.
“Is it by top American designer Michael Kors?” he asked, referring to her co-host on “Project Runway.”
“It’s not,” she said with a sour face. “It’s Galliano.”
On E!, when Ryan Seacrest was not inexplicably playing with Barbies between interviews, he grilled Amy Adams, looking quite beautiful in an emerald Proenza Schouler strapless dress that set off her pale skin and red hair. He asked about the ephemeral gold mesh bag hanging from a chain interwoven between her fingers, and found it was just for show.
“It is a bag,” Ms. Adams protested. “I have invisible lipstick in there.”
But like the fashion, it was ultimately empty.
Published: February 25, 2008
HOLLYWOOD — The movie industry must have woken up from the writers’ strike with a rotten hangover, unable to even think about frivolous things like parties and frocks. It was such a buzz kill that quite a few of the actors on the red carpet at the Academy Awards looked as if they either couldn’t be bothered with fashion this year — so not superficial were they — or had dressed in the dark on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
The hits were few and the misses, well, seemed to be less a result of actresses who dare to risk the wrath of the fashion police (Tilda Swinton leading the charge in a shapeless black bolt of fabric that appeared to be designed by the House of Hefty) than a general sense of red carpet malaise.
“I think a lot of people are being safe,” Kimora Lee Simmons, usually a fashion extrovert, commented on the E! channel. “Safe to me reads like boring.”
Certainly the stars deserved some leeway, but you would think that after months of Hollywood gloom and doom, the fashion would have been a little more upbeat. Instead, there seemed to be only two choices — wear red and be seriously appropriate or wear black and be appropriately serious.
The first camp belonged to Katherine Heigl in an Escada one-shoulder dress, Ruby Dee in a satin belted dress and jacket by Kevan Hall, Miley Cyrus in suitably youthful Valentino and Anne Hathaway in a stunner from Marchesa with a sash of red rosettes. The serious crowd included Amy Ryan in a flat (actually navy) Calvin Klein toga and Jennifer Garner, in embroidered silk taffeta from Oscar de la Renta. Few women wore big jewels — a sign of the sober mood — except for those dressed in black, but then they had to try harder just to be noticed as present.
Nevertheless, shown against a backdrop of gray clouds, the black dresses looked so similar that it hardly seemed worth checking the labels. That wasn’t the case for two women who wore purple: Cate Blanchett looked radiant in a satin gown with a plunging neckline that was accented with green beads, matching her earrings; and Jessica Alba wore a draped Marchesa gown that was tipped with a bit of froth.
There were also some shocking moments, the kind of loopy flubs that modern advancements in the profession of fashion styling had all but done away with years ago. Ms. Swinton, bless her Dobby the House Elf-loving heart, will most likely wake up with a few bruises tomorrow for her dress (from Lanvin), and Marion Cotillard, the French (and normally chic) actress from “La Vie en Rose,” wore a mermaid gown from Jean Paul Gaultier that was unsubtly printed with fish scales. Get it?
But the biggest faux pas tended to come from the other side of the hedgerows edging the carpet, where the commentators were climbing over one another to fawn and gawk and gently probe. On ABC, George Pennacchio must have been overwhelmed by his encounter with Heidi Klum, in a red dress with a picture-frame neckline and a woodlike bun of hair on her head.
“Is it by top American designer Michael Kors?” he asked, referring to her co-host on “Project Runway.”
“It’s not,” she said with a sour face. “It’s Galliano.”
On E!, when Ryan Seacrest was not inexplicably playing with Barbies between interviews, he grilled Amy Adams, looking quite beautiful in an emerald Proenza Schouler strapless dress that set off her pale skin and red hair. He asked about the ephemeral gold mesh bag hanging from a chain interwoven between her fingers, and found it was just for show.
“It is a bag,” Ms. Adams protested. “I have invisible lipstick in there.”
But like the fashion, it was ultimately empty.
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