Without Cher, Madonna and Joan Rivers, this year’s Oscar fashions would have been mired in subtlety and good taste.
Fortunately — thanks to Cher’s out-there pearly crown, Madonna’s drooping bosom and Rivers’ reaching new lows in malappropriate fashion commentary — there was still something to ridicule and criticize.
The profusion of paid dressers — known as Hollywood stylists — meant most stars were saved from their worst instincts. Instead of the getups of yore, most of this year’s fashion show was a parade of modest necklines, sequin-free ball gowns and precious little cleavage.
Madonna, in shoulder-length ringlets more fitting for a young Shirley Temple, could have used some of that underwear that she made famous long ago as outerwear. It’s time to tuck those breasts back where they belong.
Susan Sarandon, too, was a bit pneumatic in a long black number. Her date for the evening, adolescent son Jack, set the tone of the fashion coverage of Monday’s event when he confidently told Rivers (of the E! cable network) that his tux was a loaner from Ralph Lauren. “We, like, borrowed it,” he said.
Robert Duvall, like, didn’t have a tux on. He wore a suit and tie.
That about covers the male fashion news.
As for the fem side of the event, many of the stars got freebies or loaners of fabulous gowns and bountiful jewels and seemed delighted to give out the free publicity that was the quid pro quo of the night.
Kim Basinger, who has been knocked for some bizarre choices at Oscars past, was a vision in pale green satin with a high neckline and Grace Kelly hairdo.
Similarly tasteful, almost Old Hollywood, was Minnie Driver, in modest elegant deep-red draping, with a matching red fox stole. She said designers “were trying to bribe my stylist” to get her to wear their labels. “It’s big business, this runway,’ she observed.
And how. Helena Bonham Carter got so sick of being begged to wear certain designers that she had a not-famous seamstress (at least not yet) stitch up a gloriously simple strapless lavender number.
Speaking of lavender: It’s so hot, it’s cool. Sharon Stone, wearing a simple long-sleeved white shirt and an elegant satin skirt in the softer side of purple, was a vision by virtue of mixing the ordinary with the extraordinary.
Deep sapphire blue, by the way, is the new black.
Shelley Winters looked great in that shade — and bless her for knocking off 50 pounds. Ditto sapphire for Marlee Matlin and Judi Dench. Helen Hunt and Gloria Stuart were elegant in other shades of blue.
Drew Barrymore gets points for wearing daisies in her hair. And even though Kate Winslet ignored the keep-it-simple trend, her medieval getup in green velvet was a knockout, thanks mostly to the dragonfly on her shoulder.
Speaking of shoulders — well, biceps — does Cher regret those tattoos that were peeking out of her sparkly ivory confection?
Rivers deserves a special Oscar for fawning idiocy and dopey questions. including asking Joan Cusack (gorgeously back in shape after having a baby nine months ago) if she was wearing a girdle.
Do they make those things for your mouth?
