What ARE They Wearing? – Oscars Edition

It seems incredible in these days of ghoulish dissection of who wears what to the Oscars, to think that in 1929, the year of the first Academy Awards ceremony, the actress award winner, Janet Gaynor, wore a tiny off-the rack dress with a Peter Pan collar that she probably picked up from a children’s store.

In 1937, the Austrian ingenue Luise Rainer accepted her best actress award in a nightgown; and in 1958, Joanne Woodward accepted hers in a green dress she’d sewn in her Connecticut barn.

But in the last decade, the Oscars have been transformed from a celebration of Hollywood magic to a marketing spree where stars are often paid tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) for serving as walking advertisements…

In the early days of the Oscars, most stars took pains with their turnouts.. In the ’30s, studio costume designers outfitted their leading ladies; but after Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor headed for couture houses (respectively, Givenchy and Dior), the idea that a star was defined by her dress designer caught on. And in 1998, as movie stars nudged models off magazine covers, Anna Wintour, Vogue’s editor, announced that “Oscar madness” was here to stay.

Oscar fashion: The story behind “Who are you wearing?” – International Herald Tribune

And now, for no other reason than to scare you silly, I give you a person whose fashion choices and whole existence will forever be just plain wrong…Celene Dion…