Kim Knight takes an inexpert dive into the 2024 award season’s fashion and discovers a Colonel Sanders necktie is hotter than gravy but there may be no saving Billie Eilish.
The world is burning, but celebrity prom season continues. Oscars, Emmys, Grammys, Golden Globes, Baftas et al. If you can’t stand the spotlight don’t put a pin through a giant Post-it note and call it a dress, Aubrey Plaza. (See also: Miley Cyrus and 14,000 pins).
How many sequins does it take to light a red carpet? Is Billie Eilish every high schooler whose mother assured her she’d grow into that uniform? Why is absolutely nobody under 30 wearing a bra?
In 2024, award-season commentators have had a lot to talk about. Rosamund Pike was too funereal! Amanda Seyfried dressed like an eggplant! These and many other fashionable conundrums have occupied the thoughts of industry trendspotters. (Key trend: Margot Robbie). From January’s Golden Globes to yesterday’s Oscars, celebrities’ clothes have been as scrutinised as the movies, music and television shows they’re touting.
Of course, you don’t have to be an expert to have an opinion. In January, when the Golden Globes beamed live from the Beverly Hilton, I sent a note to the Viva team: “Emma Stone v the Backdrop - who wore it best?”
I’d accidentally nailed a zeitgeist. Turned out florals were the new black, especially if Pike was wearing them. I was on a roll. There was no stopping me now. I was just a girl standing in front of a Westfield asking it to stock more size 39 flat black sandals and I had valid fashion THOUGHTS.
For example, when I spotted Pedro Pascal wearing a jumper at the Emmys, I thought... WTF?
“Is he wearing a jumper?!” I screeched to a fashionable colleague.
“I maintain there is something gently perverse/sensual/suggestive about being able to see a tie through a slightly sheer sweater,” she replied.
Ellen Pompeo also went sheer, but her tie was on the outside. Was this gently perverse or an upmarket American diner uniform, circa 1976? You be the judge and so will I because several million best-dressed lists prove that absolutely anyone can have an opinion and put it on the internet with a photo gallery.
Image 1 of 5: Meryl Streep attends the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Valentino. Photo / Getty Images
I filed the Grey’s Anatomy star’s look under “bow-tied” and noticed Calista Flockhart basically wearing the same thing in blue and Kathryn Hahn wearing the same thing in black-and-white. I declared Colonel Sanders-core hotter than gravy and added the word “influencer” to my resume.
You know what colour really pops on the red carpet? Red. That’s right. And you read it here first! Witness Fantasia Barrino, Suki Waterhouse, Heidi Klum, Sarah Snook, Andrew Scott, Katherine Heigl... I’d go on but Eugene Lee Yang just out-redded the red carpet (click through, below).
Image 1 of 13: Eugene Lee Yang, who voices one of the characters in the animated sci-fi comedy Nimora, makes a dramatic Oscars entrance. Photo / Getty
People inaccurately label fashion commentary as an inane opinion anyone could have, but in 1927, the Hemline Index proved them wrong. According to the theory that links frocks with finance, when times are tough, skirts will become longer.
Clothes are a barometer of The State Of Things. In an equation even more perverse than a sheer sweater, the tighter the economy, the more fabric designers deploy. Naomi Campbell’s Chanel vestments, Lily Gladstone’s Valentino parachute and Emma Stone’s Louis Vuitton’ed leg of mutton shoulder spoke volumes in an awards season with a run-up that was hobbled by Hollywood’s historic strikes.
Image 1 of 6: Ariana Grande arrives at the Oscars in puffy pink Giambattista Valli Haute Couture. Photo / Getty
(There could be only one winner in the Best Actressed Fabric category. Helen Mirren might not know a 1kg block of tasty cheese is pushing $19, but at the Golden Globes she wore the entire world’s economic distress on her gargantuan lavender sleeve. In that moment, Mirren used fashion to connect with me on a level she simply never achieved as a French Chef in The Hundred-Foot Journey. Second place: Ariana Grande who floated down the Oscar’s red carpet in mid-bubble bubblegum pink).
Image 1 of 8: Michelle Yeoh attends the 96th Annual Academy Awards in custom custom Balenciaga. Photo / Getty Images
Was it compulsory that every sequin on every carpet was silver? In my increasingly expert opinion, Julia Garner and Sheila Atim were goddesses and Bryce Dallas Howard had just come from a hen’s party where guests were forced to make bridesmaid frocks out of tinfoil. I will never be ready to talk about Natasha Lyonne in Schiaparelli or Dwayne Johnson in What Was He Thinking?
As a self-appointed arbiter of sartorial taste it is my job to make sweeping generalisations based on little more than generalised sweeps of photo agency websites. Thus: Barry Keoghan (Saltburn) and Emma Corrin (Princess Diana) were not separated at birth but it’s possible their Bafta outfits were. Margot Robbie’s Golden Globes fishnet stole reminded me of the afternoon my grandmother taught me to make bath scrubbers from onion bags.
Image 1 of 5: Himesh Patel (who began his career on EastEnders) at the BAFTAs. Photo / WireImage
It occurs to me the top half of Emma Brooks McAllister’s Venus de Milo-inspired Do Long gown is probably already on Temu, that Karen Gillan’s Golden Globes outfit was scarier than anything that’s appeared in the Dr Who universe(s) and I was a little bit unfair on Billie Eilish who was, at least, consistent. Meanwhile, if you are not Eugene Lee Yang but still want to be a little bit interesting in a suit, either (a) wear a velvet jacket or (b) slap a brooch on it.
If you are Donald Glover, you just need to be Donald Glover.
Kim Knight is an award-winning lifestyle reporter who joined the New Zealand Herald in 2016.