Fashion

Oscars 2016 and the best dressed who graced that red carpet

Clingy creations turn heads and break rules as Tinsel Town’s finest sets glamour agenda

Brie Larsen attends the 88th Annual Academy Awards. Photograph: Getty Images

Dominique McMullan
Mon Feb 29 2016 - 18:18

The 88th academy awards means lots of photographs of the world’s most expensive dresses, hanging off the world’s most done-up people, flooding newspapers and websites.

Ultra-feminine and ultra-revealing seemed to be the theme of the evening. Dresses were clingy and showed lots of “side-boob”, or lots of thigh. Rachel McAdams went for both, and in doing so broke the “breast or leg” rule of fashion. Of course rules are made to be broken, but the situation wasn’t helped by the fact that the dress she chose was crinkled and too big for her.

Charlize Theron also rocked the less is more look in Christian Dior. With her statuesque frame, she may have just about pulled it off, but you wish she didn’t feel like she had to.

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Saoirse Ronan at the Hollywood & Highland Center. Photograph: Gregg DeGuire/WireImage

Floaty princess gowns were another theme, produced even by designers like the normally subversive Alessandro Michele for Gucci. There is nothing wrong with the dress he designed for Brie Larson, albeit perhaps the cup sizing, but seeing it worn by a woman who so powerfully played the part of a female fighting against the odds, makes it feels a little mismatched. And don’t even get us started on the “front-strands-pulled-back playground-hair”. You’re better than that, Brie.

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Sexism

Another fairy princess was Cate Blanchett in Armani Prive. That’s the Cate Blanchett who called out red carpet sexism at the Golden Globes last year, by asking a camera man in the middle of a particularly objectifying sweeping shot if he “did that to the men”.

Blanchett would look great even if she wore a bin bag, but we might respect her a bit more if she actually did. On second thoughts though, Kate Winslet wasn’t far off bin bag chic in Ralph Lauren and we were not that keen (love the glasses she presented the award in though).

Was there also a Quality Street memo that went around? Brie Larson wasn’t the only one wearing sweet-wrapper purple. Rather embarrassingly, Reese Witherspoon and Tina Fey turned up in very similar purple corset-type gowns. We quite liked Fey’s, but Witherspoon looked uncomfortable.

The sartorial winners of the night were undoubtedly the women who took risks. Jennifer Laurence stood out in lingerie-inspired Christian Dior, and her platinum blonde bob will have everyone off to the hairdressers. Despite the fact that she heavily played up the princess theme, we quite liked Alicia Vikander’s bright yellow outfit, which marked her out from the crowd.

Our overall favourite of the evening? Well our very own Saoirse Ronan of course. In a Calvin Klein collection dress, and mis-matched earrings, she looked beautiful, comfortable and confident.