Celine Dion’s Backwards Suit
In between cosmetic procedures (her new addiction), Lucinda McRuvy took the time to compose a list of the worst-dressed Canadians in show biz. She even added a special category, The Worst Dressed Canadian Hall of Fame, just to dishonor Celine Dion.
Now I’ve never been Dion’s biggest fan, but I’m going to take some time and a few paragraphs to defend her. The reason: Celine Dion is a champion of antifashion.
Whatever passes for fashion nowadays on the red carpet is not what I would call fashion. I’ve blogged about the stylist-hijacked, designer-sponsored trend that has made the red carpet such a creative wasteland, so I don’t need to do that again. Just trudge through my archives — if you’re so inclined.
But if you want to know why I worship Celine Dion as an antifashion icon, just read this 2007 story about her from contactmusic.com:
Celine Dion has refused to ever set foot on a red carpet again because she hates answering superficial questions about the clothes she is wearing. The superstar singer was savaged by the fashion police for wearing a backwards white Dior suit to the 1999 Oscars and has never truly recovered from the criticism. And now she tells style magazine W she insists on bypassing red carpets at events - so she doesn’t have to talk about fashion. She says, “I just want to do music and perform for people who want to see me performing.
“I don’t want people to say to me, ‘Are those diamonds yours? Did you borrow them?’ I can pay for my own diamonds, and I don’t need to wear the necklace of the year.
“I don’t need that s**t, so I don’t want to walk on the red carpet. If nobody wants to dress me because they want publicity, well, I’m sorry.”
But Dion has won praise from some fashion designers - because she’s one of the few stars who insists on buying whatever she wears. Gilles Mendel, who has become one of the singer’s favourite designers, admits he can’t remember ever lending her an outfit. He says, “It’s really rare… She is really classy. It creates an independence, so she doesn’t owe anything to anyone.”
Aside from that, the suit really isn’t that horrible. Only a scrawny bird like Celine (or a model) could get away with wearing a fabric draped across the breasts like that, and it really does fit her well through the torso, too. Her pants needed to be shortened slightly so that they didn’t break like a man’s trouser at the ground (or else her heel needed to be an inch higher). Her body type favors a plunging neckline — not the neckline of this jacket — because she has such great shoulders. She also has a long neck, so she didn’t need to accentuate the vertical line from her shoulders upward by choosing that fedora (although I’ll admit that I’d kill to have the hat).
Technically, that’s what’s wrong with the outfit. Artistically, however, the outfit is a masterpiece. Just imagine how much more fun the world would be if people went out in public in clothes like this.
Forget what the so-called fashionista say. Fingers need to be pointed at the millionaires who demand free clothes. Fingers need to be pointed at the stylists who have made “good taste” a commodity, as if it actually has some sort of value in the grand scheme of things. Fingers also need to be pointed at people who write worst-dressed lists.
I don’t want to come off as a sanctimonious windbag, so I’ll admit that I used to get paid to write those lists, too. Yet I don’t know if there’s anything else in my past as a fashion journalist that embarrasses me more. I was a rotten person back in those days. Thankfully, I had people like Celine Dion in my life to show me the error of my ways.
Now if I only felt the same way about her music!
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.
Courtney Love
If I had to pick the one dress that has influenced fashion the most in the past ten years, it would be this one. John Galliano designed this gown for Christian Dior Haute Couture. The collection was inspired by hobos, and the dress originally was presented on the runway with dangling fake mice and tiny beer cans. Courtney Love cut those off before walking the red carpet at the 2000 Golden Globes in the name of “good taste.”
Love had recently been reinvented for the red carpet. Cleaned-up and looking undeniably gorgeous, she literally made the jaws of the fashion press drop to the ground when she stole the show at a couple of events leading up to this particular red carpet. Jeanne Beker has even cited Love’s appearance at another event in a glorious Versace number as a career-making move. Up to that point, Love wasn’t even on the fashion radar.
And then she showed up wearing this dress. I couldn’t have been more delighted, but the world reacted rather unfavorably. Even W magazine couldn’t decide what to say about the ensemble, calling Love “trashy” on one page, then simultaneously praising Galliano’s collection on another.
But, as the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20. Looking back, this dress basically encapsulated the decade that would follow it. The deconstruction/reconstruction trend, the red carpet craze, the return of Hollywood glamour, the embellishment fad, makeover madness — all of the movements that have defined the ’00s are evident in this one snapshot.
Of course, I wish I could find a better photo of this dress. But it seems to be forgotten by most people, including the people who write about fashion. That’s sort of tragic, because this dress needs to put in a museum for the sake of posterity (maybe it has been, for all I know). It’s an icon.
Many people who write about fashion don’t attempt to understand the garments in the context that they were created and presented. This gorgeous gown was ripped to shreds and put back together again only to be met with mixed reviews by an audience who was mostly unqualified to offer its opinion on the subject. If that statement doesn’t describe this past decade in both fashion and fashion criticism (and Courtney Love’s life, for that matter), I don’t know what does.
