Red Carpet Extravaganza -- 2009 Emmy Awards

Here is my review of the fashion at the 2009 Emmy Awards, which happened last night.


They all looked like this.

Jenna Fischer in Reem Acra

Ummmmmmm...

Yeah, that's pretty much all I've got on that. I'm going to go make lunch now.


Image: Style.com

Hollywood Bores Me

The Emmy Awards were this weekend. To be perfectly honest, I forgot about them, but now that I've looked at the photos I'm not sorry about that. I am just soooooo bored with these people and their fashion choices. Oh, sure, everyone (well, almost everyone) looked "nice." Nice. Nice & neat & tasteful. Of course, the Hollywood definition of "tasteful" means a dress so tight your date should wear protective eyewear in case a seam pops, and often a display of bosom that used to be reserved for Playboy pictorials, but still. Tacky does not equal adventurous.

I've complained before about the dispiritedness and sameness of most Hollywood awards show fashion and how galling it is to me that these women with nearly unlimited means and access continue to choose to wear clothing that often looks like something I could buy off the rack at Dillard's. I'm blaming stylists a lot these days, and if you want a fascinating look at that whole hot Hollywood mess, I recommend this article about Rachel Zoe by Lynn Hirschberg in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine. My favorite part was when Todd Shemarya, Zoe's "brand agent," justifies her upcoming lines of jeans, sunglasses and shoes by saying, “Very few designers ever went to design school." Um, WHAT???? I'm sure all the nice people at Central Saint Martins and F.I.T. will be very surprised to hear that, especially since they provided educations to people like Hussein Chalayan, John Galliano, Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen, Zac Posen, Carolina Herrera, Norma Kamali, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, and many, many others. This is the sort of hubris and ignorance that's set to be running the fashion industry, people. You've been warned.

But you want to see pictures, huh? Okay, here are some:

You know, I've always liked Felicity Huffman (in David Meister here). She's a wonderfully talented actress who has always been viewed with a great deal of respect in the theater community. But Flicka's transformation to Hollywood uberbabe... it kinda skeeves me, frankly. She looks amazing and it's great to see someone so talented who's worked so hard get her due, but still. I worry that something Faustian went on.

Elizabeth Perkins, fresh from putting out the chips & dip. Seriously, if the fabric is stupendous, this dress might be a lot better up close. But from a distance she looks like she's hosting a key party in 1972.

I found this dress, billed as "vintage Chanel," mildly interesting, but they throw the word "vintage" around in Hollywood like a prescription for Xanax, and it basically means "anything not from the previous season." I don't exactly think Coco had a hand in this dress.

Oh, look -- another tasteful, extremely tight strapless black dress. This one is from Bottega Veneta. Yeah, it's nice. You know what was also available from Bottega? This:

Which is beautiful, and not quite such a cure for insomnia.

And here we have another of the ubiquitous fitted satin column gown species:

Mary-Louise Parker in Dolce & Gabbana. She looks nice, but here's the thing: I was taught -- and I maintain -- that if whatever garment you are wearing is so snug that it gets those horizontal creases & puckers, it is TOO TIGHT. I have shooed clients out of many a garment for just that very reason. I know a dress like that has to fit you to a trice to look the way it's supposed to, but that fit has moved beyond a trice. Here's another thing I tell my clients: do not wear satin unless you do not plan on sitting down all night. Because, oh, the lap smiles you're going to have when you stand up, and there won't be any nice magazine editors Photoshopping them out of the pictures for you. Lastly -- if you're going to Dolce & Gabbana for a dress, why on earth would you waste the opportunity on something you could basically find at the Jessica McClintock store? Why not go for this:

Now that you couldn't find at the mall. (Unless it's a very nice mall.)

Heidi Klum in Galliano here. Pretty color, she looks beautiful, love the softness of her hair, cannot bear the affectation of that exposed leg. (And it's a look she goes for a lot.) Granted, the woman has some spectacular gams and I can understand her wanting to show them off. So why not go for this, also from Galliano, but for Dior:

Gorgeous.

Oh, I could go on & on, but frankly, I'm disheartened and bored with these people. It's enough to make me positively dread the Oscars...

Photos: Style.com