The couture outfits that should be worn by stars at the Oscars
Griping about unimaginative Oscar dresses has become an annual ritual among fashion watchers (myself included). The list of “atrocities” regularly committed by attendees includes hogging the middle of the road, navigating the red carpet while under the influence of beige, and failure to wear any neckline that isn’t strapless.
So last week in Paris, while reporting on the shows, I mentally put myself in the celebrity stylist’s shoes. Actually, since most celebrity stylists don’t attend couture, being otherwise engaged answering the multiple sartorial demands of their charges, this was better than being in their shoes. This was like being on stilts, standing in front of them. I was ringside at the greatest fashion show on Earth. How hard could it be to pick out a dozen or so ravishing frocks?
Um, where to start? The first issue is that dressing an actress for the biggest night of her career is no longer where many couture houses direct their main energies. At last week’s shows, it was notable how many maisons have largely turned their backs on safe Oscar-appropriate styles in favour of appealing to their (paying) clients or to prestigious editorial in fashion magazines. Dolce & Gabbana, who show their Alta Moda collection tomorrow in Milan, actively discourage its appearance on the red carpet, knowing their customers prefer exclusivity.
On the couture catwalks, spectacularly lavish balldresses and embroidered tunics popular at Middle Eastern weddings, or “avant garde”, barely-there experiments that would set off every pacemaker at the Academy Awards, now outnumber generic red carpet dresses.
“The problem is, the Oscars aren’t regarded as fashion any more,” says Fiona Golfar, editorat-large of British Vogue. Golfar has attended the Oscars with her husband, producer Robert Fox, and dressed actresses for them. “It’s surprisingly tough getting hold of decent dresses. For one thing, there’s a strict pecking order, both among actresses and designers. You can have a great actress who might score an A among her peers, but only rate a B or C in the fashion world, because she isn’t thought to wear clothes well.”
Or she might be the wrong age. When Golfar dressed Dame Maggie Smith the year she was nominated for Gosford Park, she was informed by one house “that they weren’t interested in dressing a woman in her mid-sixties”.
The hierarchy cuts both ways. Actresses want to be seen in labels of commensurate status, or above. Labels tend to feel the same. Double As include Julianne Moore (“despite her age,” as one Hollywood insider put it), Jennifer Lawrence (“she can even make falling over look good,” said the same insider), Tilda Swinton, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara and, suddenly, Alicia Vikander.
Acute status-awareness leads to a degree of unseemly horse-trading behind the scenes, with some stylists stockpiling dresses they have no intention of putting on their clients simply to prevent other stylists having them, or reduced to promising designers they’ll put an A-lister into their dress, provided that designer agrees to dress their other, less exalted clients.
It sounds like a bear pit, but then stakes are high. The right look (hair and make-up are also key) can make casting agents reassess their preconceptions about her stock value. If she’s just played a dowdy frump, the Oscars are her chance to demonstrate that she’s a bankable sex pot.
The perfect dress isn’t one that’s merely flattering: it should position you on the map as a potential fashion muse, which means you can begin collecting fees for wearing certain labels on the red carpet. One Hollywood agent told me that an Oscar nominee can charge up to £200,000 an outing – though it’s more usually jewellery than fashion houses that pay.
The Holy Grail of red-carpet dressing is a contract with one of the big European fashion names. These are even more rare than Oscars, however. Cate Blanchett has Armani; Jennifer Lawrence, Marion Cotillard, Charlize Theron and Natalie Portman have Dior; Alicia Vikander and Michelle Williams are signed up to Louis Vuitton; Kristen Stewart, Keira Knightley and Julianne Moore have affiliations with Chanel.
Depending on their deals, actresses are obliged to wear these brands at a number of key events, appear in advertising campaigns ( generally shot by top fashion photographers) and make appearances on the front row.
The money is the big draw. “Many Hollywood actresses earn less than the public imagines,” says Anna Bingemann, who has styled Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts and Uma Thurman. “Most films are pretty low-budget these days. Many indie films pay actors less than they’re paying their nannies.” A financial association with a fashion house can be a career lifeline.
Brands like to lock their mascots in for several years, not least because it allows them to build a creative relationship based on trust. Too many of them have been burned by actresses and stylists demanding five enormously expensive options, only to ditch all of them at the last moment, while somehow failing to return any of them.
The twinkling Armani Privé ballgown Cate Blanchett collected her Oscar in two years ago showed what happens when an actress and a designer hit the sweet spot, creatively. But these arrangements also mean there are fewer dresses for those actresses outside the magic circle. Another chink in the system, says Bingemann, is that there are now so many noteworthy awards. “In the old days, no one in America really watched the Baftas. You had the Globes and the Oscars. Now you have the Sag Awards, the Baftas, the Independent Spirit Awards, the Emmys… You’re talking months of awards.”
Campaign trails can start in September with the Venice film festival. That’s a huge number of dresses. “The sensible strategy,” says Bingemann, “would be to hold the best dresses for the Oscars, but it doesn’t work like that.”
So to my Oscar picks. Hmm. All I can say is that compromises were made. I’ve omitted sheer, although in real life, designers could probably be coaxed into adding linings, and I’ve bypassed anything that won’t play well in Milwaukee. I had a hard time finding much colour – then again, given the controversy surrounding this year’s nominations and the sobering situation in Syria, monochrome might be the order of the evening.
I thought hard about weaning Kate Winslet out of her habitual stiff columns and about trying to make Rachel McAdams look a bit more left field. But Winslet’s stiff columns work for her and left field might look all wrong on McAdams. And what do you do about Charlotte? Three days ago she was a Double A – 69, but a hot fashion property because, hell, she’s Charlotte Rampling. Then came the race row. Now some designers may feel cautious about dressing her… This Oscar dressing business is not as easy as it looks.
The Oscars are a chance to show you are a bankable sex pot