Insecure actresses sheep in show-pony clothing at Oscars
It’s not who you are, but who you’re wearing
Within seconds of the red-carpet Oscar coverage beginning, the world’s media will be reduced to a scrapbook of fashion images and photo galleries, a seething mass of virtual judgments — more often about women than men — ranging all the way from “she killed it” to “what the hell was she thinking?”
No wonder Hollywood is throbbing with nervous energy. The jewels, shoes and clutches may already be laid out in Beverly Hills Hotel penthouses, ripe for the picking, but this past week a procession of slick messenger vans with more security than a presidential motorcade has been delivering The Dresses, fresh from their ateliers in Europe, to top stylists across Los Angeles.
Cate, Sandra, Judi, Meryl et al. have received the call: “It’s here. We need you to come in for a fitting.”
The stakes are high enough for A-listers and can be life-changing for industry ingenues. “Young girls can get famous today without having huge roles in blockbusters, just by having style,” Leslie Fremar — stylist for Julianne Moore, Charlize Theron, Reese Witherspoon and Scarlett Johansson — told the March issue of Vanity Fair.
The right dress, jewels, hair and makeup may not only win an actress the endorsement of a major fashion house, she says, but also “bring awareness to decision-makers who maybe didn’t think she was beautiful, sexy, or desirable enough to open a movie. This is now an integral part of the Hollywood business.”
Just how integral is becoming cause for concern. When Jennifer Lawrence showed off her new pixie cut on the red carpet at the première of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire last November, CNN issued a breaking-news alert.
“That was the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me in my entire f---ing life,” she later told talkshow host Jon Stewart. “Terrorists in the Middle East know I got my hair cut.”
Terrorists will also know that actresses Hayden Panettiere and Edie Falco bought their Golden Globe dresses “off-the-rack.” Tsk, tsk.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever worn Tom Ford,” Panettiere gleefully admitted, “because I’ve been begging.”
This confounded fashion journalists and the designer himself, who assured anyone who asked that “he only dressed Naomi Watts” that night.
“Good for Hayden,” says one Alist blond actress who, tellingly, didn’t want to be named. “I’m so sick of clippity-clopping down red carpets. We’re not show ponies.” Only, of course, they are — otherwise they would be speaking up on the record and en masse. But signs of dissent in the ranks are starting to bubble up.
At last year’s Academy Awards, against her harem of stylists’ advice, Anne Hathaway decided at the last minute to ditch the Valentino dress she was going to wear (she believed it was too similar in colour and cut to Amanda Seyfried’s, her co-star in Les Misérables) and sported a pink Prada column gown instead.
And at the Screen Actors Guild Awards last month, Cate Blanchett told off one cameraman for scanning her Givenchy gown from bottom to top, snapping: “Do you do this to the guys?”
Meanwhile, Mad Men actress Elizabeth Moss gave the finger to E! Entertainment’s “ManiCam” at the Golden Globes — letting her middle finger do the talking for all the “show ponies” who had been demeaned into giving the TV station a close-up of their manicures over the years.
These are just a few uprisings in a red-carpet game that most still understand the need to play. Because unlike us, these actresses have been privy to the behind-thescenes power-broking that has gone on for months in the buildup to Oscar night. Blanchett may find her close-ups sexist and debasing but lesser, more cynical members of her profession will have the figures they will receive for every camera zoom firmly in mind.
When a star will be paid an estimated $125,000 for wearing ear- rings, $75,000 for a necklace, $50,000 for a bracelet and up to $25,000 for a ring, it’s no wonder these girls are drenched in diamonds. They’re endorsing not just the brand, but the stylist ingenious enough to put the jewels, dress, shoes and clutch together. They’re also being endorsed by the brands (“If Naomi Watts can get Tom Ford, she must be double A list”) in what has become the perfect symbiotic relationship.