Forget 2015’s #AskHerMore awards-season campaign, where actresses begged to wax poetic about their roles rather than their red-carpet regalia. At Sunday’s Golden Globes, women actually want their outfits to do the talking.
Actors such as Reese Witherspoon and Jessica Chastain will reportedly ditch the self-congratulatory sparkles, pretty pastels and fashionable frippery usually associated with the red carpet. Instead, they’ll don black — some with a graphic button declaring “Time’s Up” — as a sober reminder of the sexual harassment and abuse allegations currently setting Hollywood, and the country, ablaze.
Celebrities have long used the red carpet to spotlight their favored causes, to protest or to express their rage. Think: Emma Stone accenting her gold fringe frock with a matching Planned Parenthood pin at last year’s Oscars, Ava DuVernay wearing a gown by the Lebanon-based designer Mohammed Ashi in the wake of President Trump’s announced Muslim ban, or Amber Rose donning a third-wave-feminist flesh-colored bodysuit emblazoned with slut-shaming terms such as “hoe” and “golddigger.”
Then there are the more idiosyncratic statements, such as costume designer Lizzy Gardiner’s 1995 Oscars dress made out of American Express Gold credit cards, which was interpreted as a comment on the excesses of Hollywood. Cher’s shocking Bob Mackie outfit and Mohawk hairdo in 1986 was meant to spite the Academy, which had put out a memo that year asking actresses, who had been apparently slacking off by wearing too many pantsuits, to please dress appropriately.
And it goes back even further.
“Basically, the whole notion of ‘political dressing’ has been part of awards season really since the beginning,” Bronwyn Cosgrave, author of “Made for Each Other: Fashion and the Academy Awards,” tells The Post.
Red-carpet fashion, she adds, “has been political, it’s been environmental and it’s been [used] to champion health causes.”
Even before award shows were televised — and before they rolled out a red carpet — actresses, in particular, were expected to look alluring and sexy.
Some of them resented that.
In 1936, blue-eyed beauty Bette Davis scandalized studio execs when she stepped onstage to pick up her Best Actress Oscar in a defiantly dowdy outfit she plucked from the set of a movie called “Housewife.”
Tomboy Katharine Hepburn, who never kowtowed to anyone’s notion of femininity, nearly caused a panic when she turned up at the 1974 Oscar ceremony in her “gardening clothes” and clogs, which reportedly had to be spray-painted black backstage in order to hide their actual dirt stains.
Cosgrave says that these fashion rebellions were feminist acts.
“That was at the root of certain women in the 1930s, like Bette Davis and Claudette Colbert, dressing down to go to the Oscars,” she says. “The Oscars were held at a time when they were off-duty, and they were sick of being ordered around by these studio-mogul bosses and didn’t feel like they had to show off to please them.”
Yet, says fashion scholar Valerie Steele, it was the 1960s and ’70s that made the red carpet a battleground for politics and other causes — such as the Vietnam War, civil rights and women’s lib.
“For one thing, the red carpet itself simply wasn’t that important prior to that,” says Steele, director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
But also, there was a lot more to protest.
Jane Fonda wore a black Yves Saint Laurent suit with a Mao collar for the 1972 Oscars partly as an anti-Vietnam War statement, and partly in support of women’s lib.
Actors have relied on somber garb to express not only defiance, but also solidarity.
For example, when the US entered World War II, the Academy asked Oscargoers to wear dark colors to reflect the nation’s murky mood and support the war effort.
From 1942 to 1945, “white-tie tuxedos and décolletage” were “definitely out,” says Cosgrave. Actors donned business suits, and if they were enlisted in the military, they wore their service uniforms.
Meanwhile, women were asked to swap their gowns for “semiformal” cocktail dresses or suits, preferably made in the USA. Jewelry — beyond a tasteful strand of pearls — “was a big no-no,” says Cosgrave.
It was a policy celebrities would often adopt during tough times, such as after 9/11 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which took place three days before the Oscars.
“Overnight, the dress code had changed from elaborate to sober,” says Cosgrave, who was in Los Angeles covering the event at the time. “Nicole Kidman accepted the Oscar for ‘The Hours’ that year wearing black, and that was because of the war.”
The Globes’ #MeToo fashion blackout has had its fair share of detractors, such as Rose McGowan, who in a since-deleted tweet essentially called it feeble and hypocritical. And it’s true, it’s hard to affect change using just clothes.
“Fashion is hard to read,” says Steele. “It cannot be a one-off. If a lot of people are dressing in black, then you have a more clear visual message.”
Steele cites the ubiquity of the AIDS ribbon, worn by stars such as Elizabeth Taylor and Susan Sarandon at awards ceremonies in the 1990s, as an example of sartorial rebellion done right.
“The AIDS ribbons were very important, because it was a way of making a statement of solidarity with people who had HIV, but also a way of saying to the government, ‘You need to do more to help fight AIDS,’ ” she says. “It really had a strong visual impact, because so many people wore them, and it really made a difference.”
Sincerity also matters.
“As with any statement, I think it depends a lot on who’s doing it and how much it seems like they’re going to follow through with the hard work,” says Steele. “People’s reactions will vary depending on whether they see it as just a self-indulgent protest of an elite group, or a serious commitment to do something to help other people who might not be famous.”