Arbitrary Fashion Oscars
When Ryan Gosling gets his chest out, you know it’s going to be a good night.
Sunday night’s awards felt like the most normal, least self-serious Oscars since #MeToo. Bless the producers who decided to start the show an hour early and to shave more than a full hour off the run time, bringing the entire ceremony in at 2.5 hours — shorter than Oppenheimer! Instead of wrestling with weighty societal issues, cancel culture, and people slapping each other, the show felt overall like good, fluffy fun, the kind that made Ryan Gosling want to drape himself in a modicum of sparkles and unleash his chest. The kind that had Robert Downey Jr. blasting “Texas Hold ‘Em” while he was getting ready with his squad, then saying “fuck it!” and throwing on that bolo tie.1
Maybe it’s the effect of Barbie — the movie that made Oppenheimer seem fun, that convinced the masses they actually have an affinity for bubblegum pink and should wear it specifically to sit in a dark movie theater, and that got a lot of women in particular excited about movies again. Barbie was always going to lose big. The Oscars may part with air time but they will not part with pretension. But overall, that movie’s success was a great reminder to the entertainment industry that people just want to enjoy themselves, laugh, and turn off their brains sometimes. And the Oscars embodied that very spirit.
The red carpet wasn’t a particularly spectacular year for dresses (or menswear, not that anyone ever expects much spectacular menswear). But it was a lot more fun than how Anna Wintour described Oscars fashion in her May 1999 editor’s letter for Vogue, when the corporatization of the red carpet was just starting to get under way. Quothe Dame Anna:
Maybe because of media overload, the Oscar fashion parade seemed somewhat flat this year. The dull lineup of dresses in safe colors, the array of borrowed diamonds, and the look-alike hairdos could hardly sustain one’s interest throughout the exceptionally long proceedings (and not surprisingly, the ratings were down considerably). It was enough to make you yearn for the memorable fashion faux pas of years past, or at least a star secure enough to forgo designers and stylists and dare to express herself.
Can you imagine Anna saying anything like this today? Of course not. It would likely be seen as mean, and the Oscars working through all those issues was one way to wring meanness out of the media coverage of the fashion, at least. But she was right that it can get too tedious and too sponsored. We probably can’t do anything about the sponsorships at this point, but Sunday night did not feel tedious by Oscars standards (that is, so long as you weren’t reading about J Law’s Dior dress). Ahead, Back Row’s arbitrary fashion Oscars to keep the good vibes going.
Dress That Worked the Hardest to Tell You How Hard It Was Worked: Jennifer Lawrence’s Dior
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