Emmy fashions
[NOTE: I wrote this draft a while back, but never published it. I’m in the mood for some lighter fare today; maybe you are too? So here we go—can’t get much lighter than this.]
The Emmys were on TV the other day, but I didn’t watch them. I never watch them, but afterwards I always look at the photos of the fashions.
This year they puzzled me more than ever. There were a few that were so over-the-top hideous that it’s impossible to interpret them as anything other than a purposeful effort to get attention by looking ugly. Top prize by a mile to Lena Dunham of “Girls,” who I think was going for the cotton candy look. Somehow it all went ever so wrong:
Providing Dunham with a little competition and contrast was someone named Emmy Paulson. She seems positively elegant next to Dunham, but still—double plus ungood:
The majority of the remainder of the fashions were mostly not dreadful but just not flattering, which is puzzling because for the most part these are very attractive women (although I’d never heard of most of them before), and it shouldn’t be hard for them to look lovely. But instead we get these oddities and unforced errors, close but no cigar. Perhaps merely looking elegant doesn’t get enough press to make it worthwhile.
Here’s Michelle Dockery masquerading as a semaphore flag:
Christina Hendricks is so lush already that less would be more in the fashion sense. But instead we get a cross between first prom, Hello Dolly, and Mae West:
January Jones could wear anything. Then why, oh why, choose this:
I am not very tall, and I have a short waist. So I know from bitter personal experience that people who fit that description should not, I repeat not, wear dresses that cut them up into a set of horizontal segments. Laura Prepon is neither short nor especially short-waisted. But somehow, by her choice of dress, she has managed to look as though she is both. It’s a neat trick, but why bother?:
Memo to all women: canary yellow is a hard color to wear, especially in large doses. And Kate Walsh took an especially large dose:
Some people, like Kerry Washington, seem to have trouble deciding between two dresses. And so they wear both:
masquerading as a semaphore flag
and
cross between first prom, Hello Dolly, and Mae West
You are to Mr. Blackwell as wit and grace are to ‘bitchy’.
I enjoy the fashion roundups. More. Hairdos? Makeup?
The only issues of People magazine I use to buy were the fashion round-ups following the events. My daughter and I would have a good time going over them together. It’s been a while since we’ve had time to do that. Thanks for filling in.
Tats really distract. My eye goes to that first.
At least none of these were sheer, which is an unfortunate trend in formal wear.
As for Dunham, I’m pretty sure this is a form of trolling. People comment on her not looking good and then she can complain about the unfairness of normal-shaped women like herself being held to an unattainable standard of beauty blah, blah, blah.
I’m the type of guy who does not notice fashion, but even I thought those first two dress were hideous.
Why a 16 yr old emo lad would wear his unpressed catholic school shirt and a slaughtered flamingo about his waist is beyond me.
Not to be mean, but Dunham is kinda young to look that dumpy. Hopefully no one paid money for those outfits.
Lena Dunham doesn’t have to make any effort toward style or beauty because feminism.
Ms. Dunham is clearly taking the anti-aesthetic philosophy of post modern culture and dressing herself up in it. Big fat ugly fetish right there on the red carpet…
Love you Neo but way, way too light! 🙂
As Grandma would say, “Ugly as homemade sin. . . .”
I agree that Dunham is (still) screaming for attention.
$1600 is what you didnt pay to display those images.
my images are all over the net and people like you steal them and do not pay me a dime to use my shots. took me years to get high enough on the scales so that i could be in prime position, sacrificed weeks of my life, and people just steal. (on average each image is 200 to 400 depending on agency, and the photog gets half. most cant afford to pay rent and do other jobs to earn a living)
just thought i would mention it…
not that it matters.
If Dunham represents an eligible female these days
then my deepest sympathy to young men & adventurous Lesbians, for that matter.
Like chewing your food and chomping down on your cheek, it’s a wince. Could always get worse. Could be accompanied by a rap “song.”
One little piggie went to market, killed and skinned Big Bird. Another piggie, bereft of Big Bird, took it out on a peacock. Red robins and canaries, it’s bird time on the walk. Throw a little salt on the tail. See if that flavors it up. Not likely.
Emmy Paulson’s outfit reminds me of an X Files episode. Those swarming red dots are about to eat her.
I recently encountered “Daddy Long Legs” by Jean Webster, a decidedly “light” and delightful 1912 epistolary novel about an orphan who’s helped through college by an anonymous benefactor (free on Amazon to Kindle owners, BTW). It contains these lines, which made me laugh out loud when I read them and, as slightly edited by me, seem remarkably appropriate to this post and our gracious hostess:
“One can’t help thinking, Daddy, what a colourless life a man is forced to lead, when one reflects that chiffon and Venetian point and hand embroidery and Irish crochet are to him mere empty words. Whereas a woman–whether she is interested in babies or microbes or husbands or poetry or servants or parallelograms or gardens or Plato or bridge [or politics or jelly beans or ballet or jello]–is fundamentally and always interested in clothes.”
These fashion posts are always amusing.
Nick:
It reminds me of measles.
As far as I can tell, no one forced any of these women to wear these outfits. Conclusion: many have very poor taste. 🙂
Hendricks looks pretty good to me in that dress. The rest range from meh to awful.
I’m fascinated by Lena Dunham, in the same way I gawk at a car accident. She may well be bright and semi-talented, but she is practically the Platonic ideal of “plain and dumpy.” And she’s at the height of her potential attractiveness. Poor girl, it’s all downhill from here. Look at what happened to Anita Ekberg over the decades, and imagine what will happen to Dunham…. *shudder*
PapayaSF:
Dunham’s “thing” is to look as dumpy as possible. It’s intentional; I think she could look a lot better, although never really sensational. But “dumpy” is the niche she’s staked out. She’s got that territory covered.
This seems convincing evidence that fashion designers hate women, and women haven’t figured that outl
That’s actually Sarah Paulson, and she’s been in a lot of movies and TV over the years. Somehow the fact that these were pictures from the Emmys got substituted for her name and she became “Emmy” Paulson.
One thing I’ll always remember is her small but memorable and haunting part in the movie Serenity where (spoiler alert)
she gets devoured live, just off-camera, by mutant “Reavers”.
On her IMDb page, which I linked above, you can see her picture, in which she’s blonde. Usually she is, in my experience. This is how I remember her. What I want to know, though, is whether she had plastic surgery. Her mouth looks sorta odd and unnatural.
My interest in fashion is pretty much zero, but I read these posts because I find Neo’s observations interesting and amusing, pointing out things that I would not have noticed. It’s interesting to hear detailed “why this doesn’t work” stuff, like the observation about dividing yourself into horizontal strips.
I wouldn’t have thought twice about most of these–the Downton Abbey gal’s, for instance, seems fine to me–but the first one is pretty awful even to my uncritical eye.
Holy Smokes..!! I would’a thought that it was impossible for Laura Prepon to look…well..BAD. But that Emmy’s outfit and hair dye/doo is bloody awful. Whew…Dang, Girl, do something about that stuff.