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Follow on Google News | Why is red carpet fashion so over-the-top?This article tells people the reason why red carpet fasion is so over-the top ,it does not include author's ideas but also have Bronwyn Cosgrave's ideas ,a former editor at British Vogue : Fashion and the Academy Awards.
By: bersun Has there ever been a more gut-wrenching Oscars moment than at this year’s Academy Awards, when Jennifer Lawrence tripped over her dress as she clambered onstage to collect the award for best actress? You had to feel for her. It was her big moment, a billion people around the world were watching – and down she went. Of course, Lawrence is pure charm, and she handled the moment with aplomb, poking fun at herself from the podium. And when a reporter backstage asked her the idiotic question, “What happened?” Well, exactly: look at her dress. It was a gorgeous one – a pale pink Christian Dior sheath with a vast, billowing skirt, first seen on model Manon Leloup in the finale of Dior’s Spring 2013 haute couture show. But it was hard to know what Lawrence was doing in that dress. She’s an earthy, goofy girl, with a good deal of steel in her spine; you’d never cast her as a docile princess in a fairy tale. So why does she have to play that part on the red carpet? Red carpet fashion is vexing to fashion people. To be sure, it’s big business. The industry can barely produce enough frocks to dress every A, B and C-list celeb for all the awards shows, premieres, festivals, galas and sundry other ‘appearances’ they attend in the course of a year. The fight to dress stars is fierce: if you put the right dress on the right girl, your brand will reap untold benefits. The classic example is Liz Hurley, wearing that iconic safety pin number to the premiere of Four Weddings and a Funeral. That dress established Versace as a household name. Many a handbag has been sold on the back of it. But red carpet dressing is also curiously irrelevant to fashion. From the point-of-view of fashion as art, as style, there’ Which brings me back to Jennifer Lawrence, and her Dior dress at the Oscars. Lawrence was wearing that tricky pink gown because she is the face of Miss Dior, a prestigious and no doubt highly remunerative gig. She’s obliged to wear the clothes. But couldn’ Notes on camp If Lawrence had worn either of those to the Academy Awards, there would have been howls from the peanut gallery: Joan Rivers and her ilk, the snarky tabloid editors and the viperish internet horde. Hollywood actresses are all but marched to the guillotine if they don’t play by a set of rules for formality and glamour that seemed dated even in the 1950s. The only other group of people so committed to those vintage feminine codes, at least that I can think of, are drag queens. In other words, red carpet dressing is just kind of… campy. The word ‘camp’ derives from very old French slang, ‘se camper’ Not that it was ever thus. If you look through photos of the red carpet Hollywood of yore, what you see are women dressed of their time. When Lauren Bacall went to the Oscars in 1955 in a New Look-style gown, her hair set in waves, she wasn’t getting into costume; women in the fifties set their hair, and they wore full skirts on a regular basis. Bacall’ Only a few celebrities today show any similar knack for dressing up in a down-to-earth way; of these, Sofia Coppola reigns supreme, treading the red carpet in flats and showing up to her Bling Ring photocall at Cannes in a casual yet elegant Louis Vuitton blouse-and-trouser ensemble. That takes nerve. Rules of engagement But everyone else is playing the game. Who made it up? I posed that question to Bronwyn Cosgrave, a former editor at British Vogue and the author of Made for Each Other: Fashion and the Academy Awards. “Well, it’s not really about fashion anymore, is it?” Cosgrave says. “The red carpet now, it’s about brands selling a dream. I think, maybe, you could date it back to the time Nicole Kidman turned up at the Oscars in that striking Dior gown, from John Galliano’ End
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