Dress

(Some are just always ultra stylish.)

Now, I will admit one very girly fascination. Oscar fashion. I could defend it by adding that I had a costume history class that means I look at it as art and artifact, and that would be true. But it would be misleading. As a poor kid with either cheap, or homemade clothes, I have always loved good fabric and high style. I love swirling, draping, soft and lovely clothing.

And something is terribly rotten in the state of dress. When, at the event considered the epitome of elegance, and the personages considered the most beautiful by our culture, a large portion look ridiculous, something is broken. Oh, Bjork's swan dress was probably more eccentricity on her individual part, possibly an ironic commentary on the show. But when every year these decorated celebrities appear in extraordinarily unflattering gowns, either the designers or the aesthetic is screwy.

N suggested to me that this may be because High Fashion designers are more about the art of the creation of the dress. Whereas once, hollywood stars would be dressed by costume designers, many of whom where women, whose job it was to make them look wonderful on film. And pure fashion designers, with a large gay male representation, maybe just don't get what is attractive about women, so they make costumes that are more detached, more like festival/Mardi Gras/Halloween/fancy dress.

Not that evening wear was ever all that concerned about comfort, but it was meant to accentuate appeal, reveal the body, or create a silhouette and a line. The need for dress reform movement, to release women from heavy corsetry, speaks to the kind of restrictions put on women by that society. The exposure and ridicule of women today speaks to ours. It's not frivolous to see what is raised to an ideal, and try to understand what those symptoms indicate.

Sandra Bollock looked wonderful, though.