We saw two very cropped blazers at the BAFTAs — in one post, no less — and on Saturday, Carey Mulligan hosted SNL in an Aliette ensemble that revolved around one. I am not sure I’m ready for this. Which is ironic given that at one time I WAS ready, because I bought a cropped blazer with sequin lapels off Gilt on a deep, deep sale, and when it arrived, I thought, “This is really cute but I wish it were longer.” THEN WHY DID YOU BUY IT, HEATHER? I managed to miss the return window and then eventually donated it, and now here we are and I could have been on-trend. Except let’s be real: That is advanced science and I am still in Chemistry 101.
Carey’s suffers from the weird arm loops, too, which ended up looking like a combination of wings and restraints whenever she tried to lift her arms. They chose correctly, in that mostly we saw her torso and so the outfit didn’t need an interesting lower half, but at the same time it was a very… flappy… experience.
She wore a really foxy sequin dress to introduce Kid Cudi’s second performance, which has gotten a lot of attention because he wore a floral dress:
The frock is a custom Virgil Abloh/Off White design, done as a specific homage to a shirt once worn by Kurt Cobain — and the song was called “Sad People.” For his first performance he wore a sweater that also evoked Cobain from MTV’s Unplugged, with a Chris Farley t-shirt underneath it. Here are all four together. Kid Cudi has a history of speaking about and writing songs about depression, which I learned when I looked up “Sad People” and found this essay from December by somebody who’d found a lot of solace and help in the rapper’s lyrics and in his openness. Referencing Cobain at this point in time, and in a very big and unmissable way, sure seems like a very pointed message that even as the pandemic is (hopefully, maybe) on the wane, the mental health fallout is still only beginning. If you have been depressed or experiencing thoughts of suicide, please know the world is better with you in it and you are not and will never be alone. The hotline is 1-800-273-8255.
