That’s what I’m talkin’ about!
Yeah, that Cher number … that’s what I’m talkin’ bout, Willis!
Unfortunately, she ain’t showing up at all.
IIRC, stars used to dress themselves for award shows, and a lot of hilarious, unintentionally funny looking outfits showed up in the gossip mags. Stars then started going to designers and picking out outfits. I think it happened in the mid-90’s, but stylists started picking out gowns and now practically every star looks like she got dressed by corporate committee. The majority of stars look like they picked out similar styles but with slightly differing details and colors. They look beautiful and safe. I think this is a mistake and it’s boring. I wish they’d go back to the days when the stars put together their own outfits. It would be alot more interesting to analyze their thought processes and try to interpret why they picked a particular monstrosity.
I don’t understand why some of these are supposed to be so bad.
Bjork- I cannot see anybody else wearing that dress. I think Bjork pulled it off.
The AmEx dress- For a dress made largely from credit cards, it looks pretty good.
Gwyneth Paltrow- It’s a slip dress. Unless you want to slam the whole trend, I can’t see what’s wrong with this particular dress.
Claire Danes- To me, this also ends up looking like a slip dress. In this case though, I think it really needs a jacket.
Some of the others I think were failed attempts at starting a trend or being on the cutting edge of haute couture-
Sharon Stone- To me, that dress looks unfinished. It’s a white gown with a half jacket and gold accents on the arms. For that to work, there needs to be more- more gold, more bows, more layers, more. Remember the way Prince dressed when he first became famous? Continue this dress in that style of ruffles and lace, and layers, and excess and I think it could work.
Demi More-How is this worse than the slip dress, bellbottoms, or any number of things which were successful trends? Hoopskirts hid the legs and the buttocks. The bustle was both a butt simulator, and a means to exaggerate the motion of the hips and buttocks. Demi is playing with the ideas of the hoop skirt and bustle by wearing a bustle, while baring almost everyting. I think it looks odd and doesn’t work, but I can see what she was thinking.
I agree that the following are disasters-
Geena Davis- What the hell were you thinking?
J Lo- I understand you were going for some kind of toga/shift thing and wanted to look classical. The trim, the colors and a few other details make it look like you’re wearing cheap curtains.
Doc, I think you mean Kim Basinger, not Sharon Stone. Demi’s was just fugly.
Sharon Stone was criticized for using a Gap shell under her coat dress for some stupid reason.
J-Lo looked like someone’s grandmother.
I love the credit card dress. She was a fashion designer, and she was nominated for a movie about DRAG QUEENS, for crissakes.
Is Halle Berry due to show up this year? She ALWAYS looks great on the red carpet-her dresses are some of the prettiest I’ve ever seen. (Except for Kate’s, of course).
And Joan herself is pretty scarey these days! Looking back, the Amex dress wasn’t ugly-it was odd. Nothing wrong with odd (this is the entertainment industry afterall). I do miss Cher and her amazing er, creations, though.
Thanks.
Other than combining a bustle with bare legs, what was wrong with it? I think the ‘bicycle shorts’ went too far, but examined seperately, the pieces of the dress work.
I was watching the year Cher wore that black “thing”. I think she did it to deliberately be “in your face” the the show organizers.
That year they were trying to keep the show on schedule, telling the nominees they would have only a certain time in front of the camera if they won, and also trying to introduce “respectability” into the fashions. So Cher shows up on stage to present an award or something and the first thing she says is “I’m sure you can tell I got the Academy’s recommendations on how to dress”, or words to that effect.
Another bit that year, F. Murray Abraham won an Oscar for his role in “Amadeus”, made his little acceptance speech, and the orchestra started playing as he seemed to turn away. He whirled around and said “Wait! I didn’t use up all my time yet!” He was trying to make a point to those who had their fingers on the stopwatch for the little light that was telling the winners they were using too much time.
The words “bicycle shorts” are enough. It was just too much, and too bizarre and just ugly.
Oh, another favorite-Salma Hayek’s dress from LAST year. The dark blue gown with the black rose appliques? Gorgeous. She’s another like Halle, always looks gorgeous.
As for tackily dressed? Looks like this year it’s Helena Bonham Carter. She looks like an 80s prom nightmare.
Hold your horses.
I wish she HAD pulled it off and saved me from looking at it. Bjork was trying too hard to be weird.
I also thought this dress was cool.
Gwyneth Paltrow gets a lot of shit she doesn’t deserve. This dress was fine. This dress was worse (as were the others on this site-- Michelle Williams needs help getting dressed, bigtime), but this monstrosity was the worst!
How is this a slip dress? She has a sweater on and it looks granny-ish. She’s strange-looking as it is, she should find something classic that accentuates the positive.
The gold bustle, the bicycle shorts… it’s heinous.
Huh, Michelle Williams wasn’t even on my radar, but man was she a hot mess.
A hot mess in BRIGHT RED lipstick even, ouch.
I checked in on the Oscars on and off but never saw anything that seemed tacky or half-naked. Well, there was one actress on the red carpet … don’t know who she was … who was wearing a simple off-the-shoulders dress, and it was just about the exact same color as her tan, and the result was quite startling at first class … “Naked? Outright naked?” Then my eyes picked up the lines at the collar and cuffs and realized she was in fact clothed from the waist up. Dunno if anyone else noticed it.
She’s a fashion designer and that’s how she always dresses. She’s like Bjork and Cher-you can’t include her, she’s in a catagory all her own.
Best dressed? Jessica Alba, Keira Knightley, Reese Witherspoon and Salma Hayek. Jen Garner looked great as well.
Worst? The afore-mentioned Bonham Carter, Naomi Watts, Charlize Theron, and Lisa Rinna. J-Lo’s dress would have been better without the weird gathers on her skirt-if had all been just one full skirt, like the train, it would have been okay. And girlfriend needs to lay off the Mystic Tan.
Dolly Parton looked fab-she’s so over the top, but for her, that was actually quite understated. Love her.
The Zandra Rhodes link is giving me Jennifer Anniston. (And why was she there, btw? Let alone a presenter?)
I didn’t like Charlize Theron’s hair, which is too bad, because she’s a gorgeous woman.
And Nicole Kidman, who I’ve always thought was gorgeous, is getting to be really scary-looking.
Who let Charlize’s stylist at the crack this week? That was just dreadful. Bad hair, bad makeup, and that dress is heinous. What made that giant satin goiter of a bow seem like a good idea? Was she anticipating dozing off at some point?
I didn’t like Jessica Alba’s dress, at least not on her. It made her breasts look like tiny tumors.
Keira Knightley, Salma Hayek, Reese Witherspoon, and Felicity Huffman looked gorgeous.
Omigod, I’d forgotten the dress. When she was presenting the whatever, I started whimpering “Pod person! Pod person!”
And I didn’t care for Keira Knightly’s eye makeup – a little too Olson-twinny for me.
Damn - missed this one. I didn’t read the entire thread so I hope this hasn’t been mentioned yet - Sally Kirkland & Edy Williams are notorious for showing up early and in clothing the inappropriateness of which cannot be measured. Edy Williams - former wife of Russ Meyer - is the worse of the two.
VCNJ~
I agree completely. Contrast Jessica Alba with Ziyi Zhang, who has approximately the same build but looks so much better. In fact, I think she was the most tastefully and elegantly-dressed out of anyone.