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The Red Carpet Look Is Finished
And By The Way, Bring Back Real Models to Show the Clothes
This last Academy Awards Night was the limit. Let's be honest for a moment: do these Hollywood actresses look as good in Haute Couture as the models we first saw wearing it? Oh please---Uma Thurman in that Lacroix gown---injustice was served to both actress and designer. And that was just one of the more blatant examples of Red Carpet Boo Boo. Most of these actresses can't decently walk a catwalk, let alone the red carpet, to save their lives.
Helen Gurley Brown, the long time editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine never used celebrities or movie stars on her covers, which were invariably shot by the late, great Francesco Scavullo. Why? She felt the movie stars just didn't look as good as the professional models. In her recent campaign for Louis Vuitton, can you imagine how much photo shopping it took to get Jennifer Lopez to look the way she did-super svelte, soignée, and chic? And then we have the real thing in our faces---Academy Awards night, that is---and it is proof that no amount of styling genius can hide the fact that most of these girls and guys are fashion clods.
The stars are fabulous at what they do-acting-and this is why they are stars. But fashion stars they are not, and all you have to do is browse through People Magazine to see the way the Hollywood crowd really likes to dress is in flip flops, tee shirts and shorts. It's a long haul and probably a bloody nightmare for most of them to even have to think about red carpet events. So whose expectations are being fulfilled? Do you really still like seeing male stars in outdated James Bond tuxedoes, and female stars looking uncomfortable in their Paris couture? The marvelous looking stars, notably Halle Berry and Nicole Kidman, almost always succeed with their red carpet looks. But for most of them, who use these high profile events to be experimented upon by stylists, or worse yet, as in the case of Sharon Stone, Cameron Diaz and Kim Bassinger, do their own experimenting, the end result often spells FASHION DISASTER.
And in a similar vein, what happened to professional models gracing the covers of fashion magazines? These days, I can't tell the difference between a People Magazine cover and a Vogue cover. It's giving me a big headache. I cannot almost bear to flip through these fashion print mags anymore, they look so cheap.
These red carpet events need a major re-evaluation. Meanwhile, this spring I plan to enjoy my own version of red carpet, as in the United Airlines Red Carpet Club. You can lounge in sweats there, and so one thinks a thing.
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