Auntie Fashion

Katharine Hepburn

Award shows give celebrities the opportunity to let it all hang out.  Unfortunately, most of them don’t take the chance when it’s given to them.  They enlist armies of professionals to give them a red carpet overhaul, then praise themselves on camera for looking chic, as if they’ve had a hand in creating their own look.

It’s an obnoxious convention of show business that encourages a lack of creative self-expression.  Everyone is terrified to be on a worst-dressed list, so almost no one does anything to rock the boat.

That’s why Katharine Hepburn’s appearance at the 1974 Oscars is such an iconic moment.  At that time, Hepburn held the record for the most individual Oscar nominations as an actor.  However, she had never bothered to show up at the event.  She was finally convinced to attend in order to present the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.

As she walked onto the stage it became evident that she wasn’t glammed-up.  In fact, she wasn’t dressed up at all.  In black trousers, a black jacket and a white turtleneck, Hepburn looked like Hepburn — I can’t imagine what anyone else was expecting!

Nevertheless, a story began circulating afterward that the living legend had come to the ceremony straight from working in her garden.  That’s a little hard to swallow — she was clean and her face was made up for the stage lights — but the rumor persists today.  Whatever . . .

Now what makes this such a great moment in antifashion?  It wasn’t as if Hepburn had flipped the bird to the academy.  Still, she had nothing to lose by being herself, and she knew it.  She wasn’t concerned what people were going to say about her outfit the next day, because she didn’t give a rat’s ass about what they had to say.

While I’ll heap praise on someone as fabulous as Holy McGrail, whom I blogged about a couple of days ago, I’ll also give credit where credit is due in this instance.  Katherine Hepburn had been able to live vicariously through her craft for four decades.  She didn’t need an award ceremony or a red carpet to tell her that she could be fabulous: She already knew that she was fabulous.

At its worst, fashion is about the will to conform.  At its best, fashion inspires the opposite desire: The desire to be an individual.  Hepburn embraced her individuality.  She embraced the opposite of what most people call fashion.  She is a champion of antifashion.