Let the Yawning Begin

Awards season is upon us. The Golden Globes are this Monday night, and other, less-televised shindigs have already been happening. This is the time of year I live in a constant state of fashion frustration, because the clothes are so boring. Oh, my gosh -- I just cannot get over the fashion opportunities these people just toss away over their bony, bronzed shoulders.

When I used to live in New York City, I developed a theory about diner food. I surmised, through several years of assiduous research, that there was one giant diner kitchen located beneath the center of Manhattan. Connecting this kitchen to every diner in the city was a giant series of pneumatic tubes -- you know, like the ones they used in banks or department stores in the '20's and '30's. A cadre of sweaty guys made tuna melt after tuna melt and slung them into these tubes and pushed the "send" button, then they raced from beneath Times Square to Chelsea or Park Slope or Washington Heights, and we ate them (I'd also like a side of fries smothered in brown gravy, please) late at night after we'd had too many beers in various dive bars with our friends.

I've developed a similar theory about stylists in Hollywood. I think there's only one of them, and she sits, Miss Havisham-like, in a nimbus of cobwebs and moldy satin and torn tulle on a Mario Buatta-upholstered chair in the center of a faux-Mediterranean mansion high up in the Hollywood hills. Her minions scuttle about Los Angeles, ensembling starlets and producers' wives in outfits that all come from a database of approved looks churned out by their Mistress. The Mistress insists that no one stray from her strict style dictates. If you do so, she will loose upon you her Fashion Harpies (oh, come on, you saw that one coming) to punish you with their piercing shrieks and tearing claws.

I don't know how else to explain the complete lack of creativity or sense of fashion adventure that permeates these events. Sure, most of them look nice. But really -- is "nice" all you want?

Here's a ferinstance:


Eva Longoria. Bee-yooooo-ti-ful girl. (And fellow Texan, I might add.) And the dress, well, it's nice. Red is my favorite color, so points for that. But it's soooooo predictable. It's long, it's slinky, it shows off her body, it fits her to a trice, it's zzzzzzz....

Sorry, I drifted off.

Do you know what I'd wear to the Golden Globes if I were Eva Longoria? If I were absolutely stunning and possessed of a perfect figure, an obscene amount of disposable income, and the drag to get pretty much anyone I wanted to make me a dress? This! I'd wear THIS:

(Alexander McQueen, Spring 2007)

I would probably leave off the floral headdress. Because the folks sitting behind me at the awards would have a tough time seeing around it.

But she won't wear that. She (and the rest of 'em) will wear something tasteful and all one color and cut on the bias and genteelly revealing and that basically functions as an advertisement for her personal trainer. And she'll probably show up on about 30 Best-Bressed Lists.

Yawn.