Cate Blanchett: A sexy dress doesn't mean a woman wants sex

Honoree Cate Blanchett at the 2017 InStyle Awards. Photo / Getty

Rewind your thoughts to a fortnight ago when Donna Karan became one of the first fashion names to weigh in on the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

Her input was, to say the least, not quite what one would expect from a designer famed for her pro-women, empowering designs.

"I also think how do we display ourselves? How do we present ourselves as women? What are we asking? Are we asking for it by presenting all the sensuality and all the sexuality?" she said on the red carpet as she arrived at a film awards ceremony.

According to the Telegraph she later apologised for her comments, her victim-blaming stance was a depressing input from one of the most influential designers of the past 40 years.

To last night and another awards ceremony, this time InStyle's annual Fashion Awards in L.A. Cate Blanchett took to the stage to accept the Style Icon award and used her acceptance speech to give her own perspective.

Cate Blanchett and Taika Waititi attend the third annual InStyle Awards. Photo / Getty

"Women like looking sexy, but it doesn't mean we want to f*ck you," she declared. "No one says to Steve Bannon, 'you look like a bag of trash. Do you want me to throw you out?' But the comments that get said about what women wear on the red carpet-I mean. If you troll through those trolls on the Internet, just don't".

Her comments may seem like plain common sense but the other headlines surrounding her appearence at the awards prove that it's far from a scenario we should take for granted. One tabloid newspaper covered the event with the headline: 'Cate Blanchett, 48, offers up bulging boobs in never-ending neckline'.

No. Actress wore a dress which happened not to cover up to her neck.

"For me, the true icons of style... it's that for me it's always those women who've been utterly themselves without apology - whose physical presence and their aesthetic is really integrated in a non self-conscious way," Blanchett added.

"Women who know how they look, it's not all of who they are but just an extension of that, and it's about women who feel free to wear what they want when they want and how they want to wear it".

Women's own complicity (whether they 'asked' for it or 'let' it happen) in sexual harassment has been one of the threads which has run through the ongoing allegations against Weinstein and also now the renewed focus on photographer Terry Richardson with the vital question of consent being a key line of defence for both men.

"I have never used an offer of work or a threat of rebuke to coerce someone into something that they did not want to do," Richardson stated in a blog for the Huffington Post in 2014.

While she may have been referring to what women wear on the red carpet specifically, Blanchett's comments are a much-needed and timely reminder that the clothes you choose to wear are just that- your choice with no implication otherwise.