Susan Sarandon at the 68th Academy Awards |
Who was hot and who was not at the Oscars?
When it comes to the Academy Awards you can be sure that fashion plays a powerful role on the big night, writes William Hall
Made for Each Other, by Bronwyn Cosgrave,
Bloomsbury, £20. order this book
BE sure of one thing: when the Academy Awards are over on Sunday, the morning-after debate will be filled with not only who won what – but who wore what. Once the red carpet is rolled up on the annual ritual of kissing, cuddling, tears and endless thank-yous everyone will be discussing the same thing: who was hot and who was not? With fashion playing a major part in the power game.
So there is no better time to find Bronwyn Cosgrave’s book Made for Each Other on the shelves, charting the highs and lows of necklines over the years. She takes us behind the scenes all the way back to the first Academy Awards on May 30 1929, the brainchild of MGM mogul Louis B Mayer, with stars like Mary Pickford, Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford seated at 36 banqueting tables in the Roosevelt Hotel.
Not a huge audience in those days, but it threw a pebble in the pool whose ripples grew and spread into a media tsunami that attracts an estimated billion viewers worldwide today.
In that moment the frenzy of fashion and finery began. “Ankle-grazing hemlines of chiffon and satin swept past on the dance floor,” records Ms Cosgrave, herself a follower of fashion who has covered the Oscars for BBC TV.
Compare this with the “swan dress” of Icelandic singer Bjork at the 2001 ceremony, and we see how times have changed. The ice queen of pop clad in her “ball of fluff” even laid a large cream-coloured egg sculpted by her artist boyfriend on to the red carpet as she walked past the screaming crowds.
“It was an event at which ceremonial dress appeared defined by risk-taking,” commented one guest acidly.
Bronwyn Cosgrave reveals intriguing snippets of the backstage back-biting and tensions that are part and parcel of the Oscar scene. Vivien Leigh was the despair of the wardrobe department on Gone With the Wind because of her flat chest, with the studio wanting “a heaving cleavage to effectively portray Scarlett O’Hara”. In the film they could enhance Vivien’s breasts with adhesive tape – but no such luxury on Awards night in 1940, where the costumiers finally came up with a Red Poppy evening gown, with “green-stemmed red poppies exploding like fireworks on chiffon”.
It must have helped the image. Gone With the Wind gained nine Oscars, Vivien won hers for best actress, and the world raved about her dress – “worn without a brassiere, but a with a discreet construction underneath that lifted the breasts delicately”.
Few stars cast more terror with their temperament than the legendary Marlene Deitrich. Called upon to present the award for best foreign picture in 1951, she was always going to outgun any of her rivals who dared take to the same stage. She had formed a bond with Christian Dior, and told him: “Mama had better be slinky . Nice – but slinky,” as she prepared to face the waiting masses.
Dior created an eye-boggling number in black satin with a “saucy hip-swaggering side-bow” which stunned the audience.
“Marlene didn’t win anything herself that night – except a standing ovation, and one fashion writer’s comment: ‘She held 2,800 people in her instep!’
No ceremony as big as the Oscars can run for close on 80 years without a breath of fashion scandal to get the tabloids into overdrive. It was left to Barbra Streisand in 1969 to set the auditorium gasping in a bizarre bell-bottomed trouser suit inspired by Yves Saint Laurent and created by her personal couturier Arnold Scaasi. “It was sheer black tulle dusted with iridescent sequins lined with nude silk to prevent it from appearing transparent,” relates the author.
Nude was the operative word. As Streisand rose from the front row to accept the best actress award for Funny Girl – she actually shared it that year with Katharine Hepburn for A Lion in Winter – “the powerful glare of 150 hot beaming TV lights” turned her costume see-through – “and gave 30 million viewers an ample view of her near-naked, sequin-covered derriere,” wrote one columnist next day.
But credit where it’s due. And for once in the bitchy world of haute couture, no one could find fault with Cate Blanchett’s incredibly styled Dior silk knit gown at the 1999 awards – the event immortalised by Gwyneth Paltrow almost drowning the audience with her floods of tears. “It’s the most fantastic Oscar dress ever,” raved one fashion magazine of Cate’s outfit.
The ladies won’t wear those dresses again – how could they, anyway, after they’ve been seen by millions across the world? The 100-carat gems and exorbitantly-priced gowns will go back next day to their rightful owners – apart from Jimmy Choo, who lets them keep the shoes.
But on Sunday, for this night of nights in the Hollywood calendar, the high-stepping stars will have been queens of the catwalk as well as the screen.
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