ballgown time

André Leon Talley on Golden Globes Fashion: ‘It’s Sad What Passes for Style in Hollywood’

This week Cathy Horyn lamented the barrage of badly designed dresses on the Golden Globes red carpet. Vogue editor-at-large André Leon Talley just blogged a review of his own, and was similarly distraught.

Julia Roberts. Well, this is how to make a black dress look wrong. She is no Sharon Stone; she can’t pull off a draped-jersey high-waisted number — even if it is vintage YSL. She is the embodiment of thoroughly sloppy star.


We don’t agree with all of Talley’s critiques, though we do appreciate his honesty:

Julia Roberts. Well, this is how to make a black dress look wrong. She is no Sharon Stone; she can’t pull off a draped-jersey high-waisted number — even if it is vintage YSL. She is the embodiment of thoroughly sloppy star.


Hiss. But perhaps the biggest loser of the night, gown-wise, was Christina Hendricks, who wore Christian Siriano — a frock Horyn also panned.

Says Talley:

Though their drama Mad Men won a statuette for Best Television Drama, the biggest style losers of the evening were Elisabeth Moss in Amsale and Christina Hendricks in Christian Siriano’s strapless ruffled dress, which she called “peach champagne” but looked more like roadside-diner peach melba. It was so wrong for her ample figure and golden-sunshine personality. The ruffles thudded like industrial tarp along her body like a peplum but missed the point of what a peplum should do: define the waist to flatter a woman.


Is this the beginning of Siriano’s undoing? He has quite a recovery to make from this gaff at his Fashion Week show. And we can’t say Talley has a bias against Project Runway, since he praises Meryl Streep’s Chris March–designed black belted gown. Rather, Talley’s comments seem to point to what Horyn highlighted as the chief problem with the clothes Sunday night: bad design. Would Hendricks’s “peach melba” outfit have looked good on anyone? It reminds us of a prom dress you might have found on the sale rack in Dillard’s in 1987. And that peach melba looks like a dessert you might have found on sale at Johnny Rockets that same year.

A.L.T.’s Mixed Reactions to the Globes [Vogue.com]
Related: Are Top Designers Avoiding Award Shows? And Is That Why the Dresses Are Mostly Boring or Ugly?
Straight From the Red Carpet: Looks From the Golden Globes

André Leon Talley on Golden Globes Fashion: ‘It’s Sad What Passes for Style in Hollywood’