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Red Carpet Rundown: The 2020 Emmys

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Well. Awards season has started, somehow, in a year that is eighty years long. I have some conflicting thoughts about this. It felt like the Emmys did, too. We kept getting signals – alpacas and Margo Martindale drinking wine in her backyard and putting out fires on TV and showing off the empty auditorium with a few cardboard cutouts in it as both a punchline and as some kind of proof of precaution as if nobody was backstage or behind the cameras – that this year was bizarre. An anomaly. Out of the ordinary. And sure, it is; the HAZMAT tuxedos for those tasked with delivering the Emmys (only if you win, of course, as Ramy Youssef documented), and the cameras (130 of them, according to the LA Times) dispatched to nominees’ houses, as with Nicholas Braun:     How topical of the Emmys to set-dress that subtle emerging-surveillance-state 2020 feeling! The Emmys gaze also into thee.   But this year also dovetailed the performative faux-casualness of social media with the performative branding of the… Read more »

Red Carpet Rundown: The 2020 Oscars

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The Oscars happened! And with them, a very particular subset of a very particular level of performance comes to its annual end, leaving behind nothing but the inescapable web of industry positioning and image management, punctuated by occasional moments of deep satisfaction. (Ten years from now, those brave souls who walk past the Dolby Theater in the dark Los Angeles night will swear the phantom guests who applauded Parasite’s Best Picture win are clapping still.) As always, I am fascinated by the red carpet as a microcosm of celebrity (itself a microcosm of a bunch of stuff we just don’t even have room for right now, I wrote two books about it and I haven’t even scratched the surface of my thoughts on performance, image, audience, dress, and absurdity, because it’s just where we all live now, I don’t make the rules). Every year seems to up the ante on surreal Byzantine flourishes. This year’s entry: The Curtain. The red carpet has changed this year. The stars walk on the main portion and any ticket… Read more »

Notes on “Camp: Notes on Fashion”

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  This post originally began with a 1500-word essay about camp, which I cut because literally who cares. Ninety percent of the attendees on last night’s carpet couldn’t be bothered to even read the Susan Sontag essay the entire exhibit was structured around, those who did tended to fall back on technical loopholes (“It has a lot of feathers! It counts, she said so!” “It says flapper style is camp, go, for the love of God, grab your showroom contact list and go!”), the decor was achingly tasteful and minimalist considering the brief, and the rest of the live commentary immediately devolved into debating whether things were camp enough or not on a subjective pass-fail rubric that doesn’t matter! (It especially didn’t matter if you were an E! commentator, apparently, since according to them everyone looked incredible and even before Harry Styles showed up on the carpet in haute control-top palazzos the commentators were breathlessly agreeing that he regularly blurs gender lines because – he wears pastels, maybe? They grade on a curve over at… Read more »

Red Carpet Rundown: The 2019 BAFTAs

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Welcome to the Red Carpet Rundown of the BAFTAs, tha red carpet that pretends it’s more sophisticated and understanding than those Other red carpets (look! Soothing greenery!), until you actually look at it:   (Please understand how sincerely I mean this: Yikes.) This event certainly never stood a chance against the Grammys, where much bigger statements are made. Like Cardi B, who wore 1995 Thierry Mugler Birth-of-Venus couture right down to the headpiece purely to make the statement that she has achieved the sort of red carpet clout where you can dig into designer archives for a dress that requires an assistant whose only job is to walk you successfully between photo stops. (Though for my money, the best dress on the Grammys carpet was on Jorja Smith – the kind of dress that reminds you “embellished sheath” doesn’t sound particularly daring, but can sometimes be a formalwear-barnacle wonderland.)     But still, even if you’ve been scheduled opposite the bigger party, the show must go on, because those critical wheels of publicity, favors, security… Read more »
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