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Last year, the Oscars held a funeral for fun and frivolity. The fashion was drab and conservative, marking the start of the Trump 2.0 era with solemn traditionalism. But this Sunday night, there were encouraging signs of life on the red carpet. Bold florals, cheeky feathers, and unexpected textures signaled a return of inspiration; the dresses were busy and the suits were adorned, all bursting with personality. It was a smorgasbord of styles and vibes, and with the dual threats of AI and political censorship breathing down Hollywood’s neck, it felt like a celebration of human originality.
Bird flu struck some of the biggest stars of the evening, who arrived in fluffy plumage. Nicole Kidman wore a flared feathered corset from Chanel—the only kind of peplum I’ll accept—with an avant-garde sprinkling of single feathers down the skirt. Also in Chanel, Teyana Taylor channeled a zebra, or maybe a porcupine, with stripes of dense feathery fringe that I would never be able to stop cuddling. Merging a Disney villain look with a callback to Black Swan, Demi Moore slithered along with an oily green sheen in what could be a ticklish actor’s torture device. With a subtler feathered accent, Ejae, who sang in KPop Demon Hunters, sported tiny puffs on her custom fringed Dior gown.
Louis Vuitton turned out a delicious metallic sheen and a set of rare-to-see cap sleeves on Emma Stone, and encrusted Wunmi Moksaku in sequins angled this way and that to look like crinkled aluminum. Kylie Jenner brought her own opalescence in custom Schiaparelli that shone like a cat’s eye gem.
Big flowers had a big night. Odessa A’zion wore a black fringed Versace Couture robe over pants and a chain of Pandora necklaces, looking just the right amount of disheveled for someone so extravagantly bejeweled. Rose Byrne and Anne Hathaway did floral trains two ways: gestural and chic on Byrne, cutesy and retro on Hathaway.
Sunday’s most stunning suit was from Saint Laurent on Frankenstein’s Felix Kammerer, who slunk around in a too-big jacket whose oversized shoulders somehow looked just right. The chocolate-orange luster, the cuffed sleeves—it was the pinnacle of casual decadence. Shades of brown looked equally superb on Domhnall Gleeson, who is clearly listening to someone who knows how to dress redheads, and Kiernan Culkin, dressed as a black and tan for St. Patrick’s Day.
I’m a sucker for moiré, and I loved the two ways it showed up on the red carpet this year. KPop Demon Hunters’ Audrey Nuna wore a strikingly original Thom Browne dress with a voluminous moiré skirt whose formality was thrillingly undercut by the casual asymmetry of its bustles. On top, the sharp lines of beading were so dense, it looked like a sheet of metal. Barbie Ferreira, meanwhile, wore allover moiré in a hat-tip to International Klein Blue. With a raw-edged corset on top and buttons all the way down the bottom, the Gap Studio look gave the impression of a deconstructed, inverted suit.
Monochrome suits got a bit edgier than usual on Hudson Williams, in a pinky ring and flare-legged Balenciaga; Miles Caton, in color-coordinated cowboy boots and a tie tack (more tie tacks, please!); and Timothée Chalamet, in white rubber boot soles and hands full of rings. Buddy Guy ditched the suit altogether in favor of leather overalls, which might have tipped into the Pillion realm of fetish gear were it not for the whimsical polka dots he wore underneath.
Pastels and bright tones are always welcome in the gloom of mid-March. On a few of Sunday’s dresses, they were extra playful with busy details and contrasting textures. Felicity Jones was an early daffodil in elegant boat-necked satin bedecked with pearls, beads, and tulle down the back—a real business in the front, et cetera, situation. Li Jun Li wore skeins of yarn—or was it her corset lacing?—swooped and sculpted around her body, layered like the petals of a giant rosebud. In custom Louis Vuitton, Chase Infiniti dripped the lavender petals of a lilac bush. Jessie Buckley’s Chanel gown, a take on the one Grace Kelly wore to the 1956 Oscars, was thick and solid on top, light and airy on bottom, like winter giving way to spring.
There’s something mesmerizing about a dress that can make the curves and lumps of a human body into a series of rectangles. Renate Reinsve of Sentimental Value was a strip of Louis Vuitton cinnamon gum, or maybe a Fruit by the Foot; Kirsten Dunst was a stack of custom Celine VHS tapes.
If I were at the Academy Awards, I would ask Mia Goth and Zoe Saldaña to sit on my shoulders, angel- and devil-style, in their contrasting lace slips. Goth’s was shabby-chic and scalloped at the edges like a grandma’s tablecloth, while Saldaña’s was delicate as a Champagne flute and dressed up with an Art Deco necklace.
I simply must hand it to the wearers of some of the strangest textures of the evening: Sentimental Value’s Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, who spouted a tongue of shag carpeting from her neckline; The Secret Agent’s Alice Carvalho, who made good on the old phrase about being beautiful enough to make a potato sack look good; and The Secret Agent’s Laura Lufési, who wore a unfussy patchwork number from the young Brazilian label Misci. In an industry whose riches are too often reserved for recycled IP—and whose faces may be converging on a single beauty ideal—fashion surprises on the red carpet are a necessary reminder of how energizing an artful, unexpected creation can be.
Read more in Slate about the Oscars.
