When Emma Stone popped up on my TV and this was all I could see of her, I felt optimistic. Her head is amazing, and the blazer looked so promising — I loved the idea of her in a menswear-inflected ensemble — and I couldn’t wait to see the rest.
Turns out… I could have:
As I stare blankly as this offering, I hear only Tim Gunn’s voice in my ear: “This is student work.” And, methinks, a student who doesn’t want to graduate that badly, or just never went to class. This is Exhibits A through Eeeek for why as few things as possible should be made of satin. There are plenty of formal fabrics out there that would have better accepted what these designers wanted to do to it.
Which… what did they do to it? Why the ruching on the torso? It adds nothing especially visually exciting, which may be why someone decided to partly obscure or distract from it with the the giant pink bow. (That almost looks like it was supposed to tie around the back, but then someone got funky.) And the PANTS. Who signed off on the pants? Surely no one said, “These trousers absolutely need to resist every single twitch of motion Emma might make all night, and if they can give her fabric crotch whiskers, then we have REACHED OUR PINNACLE.” They kill me. This could, in another life, have been a sleek, stylish bit of suiting. Instead, they are lethal, a refried mess that was allowed to get cold again and then gave us all food-poisoning in the bargain. No no, put your hands down, Blocky Black Shoes, you have nothing helpful to say here. I’M CRANKY. Emma deserves better, and I hope this is not a harbinger of the Vuittons to come in their nascent partnership.
Changing gears, Dee Rees — who wrote and directed Mudbound — also wore pants. (Well, so did Diane Warren, but — spoiler — we’re putting her in a metallics slideshow later.) Dee wore a tailcoat:
In a vacuum, I would not be that into formal floods. And I’m obviously terrified of the shoes, which were only easy for the Wicked Witch of the West to wear because she got to fly around all the time on her broom and thus didn’t have to worry about snapping an ankle. On balance, though? The ensemble as a whole has character, and really works on her — and, looks very well-made, which forgives a lot (ahem, Louis Vuitton) — and she looks distinguished and dapper, and wholly herself, ready to celebrate her art. Which I hope she did, eventually, in safer shoes. That is some serious foot courage right here.
