Why do we critique Oscar fashion every year? Because idols are strutting around, and idols should be mocked. Some evils can be upended only by a horse laugh. So here’s our horse laugh.

We tend to focus on A-list actors and/or up and coming faces in award-nominated films, not singers or whatnot. And we don’t do the guys except this year we had to target one male atrocity in particular because…well, you’ll see when we get there.

My critics are my roommates (past, present, and future) with the exception of Carolyn, who isn’t my roomie but whose javelin of opinions is a must for any fashion joust. Here’s the crew:

Ashley – Our expert! She has the most educated eye and also keeps a wonderful fashion blog you should check out.

Naomi – She’s a former pastry chef and a phenomenal cake artist, which is why she’s overly lenient towards dresses that look like painted icing.

Melinda – She actually can’t say anything mean, so we invite her to balance out Carolyn and me.

Kelsie – Our upcoming roommate. She doesn’t like stupid dresses. I like her.

Carolyn – She very much thinks the Red Carpet is something upon which we should drop a nuke. I think if we dropped a Carolyn, that’d do just as well.

Gwen – That’s me. I’m no fashionista but I do know when the Emperor’s naked.

Florence Pugh

Melinda: The top needs to be higher.

Carolyn: I love the color if only they’d finish the dress.

Kelsie: The ruffles are a bit childish.

Carolyn: Too many tiers on the cake!

Melinda: The belt is cute, though.

Gwen: That belt is a no on any dress, any waist, any body.

Ashley: She looks like she is going to the prom, but she looks super cute. I don’t like the cut of the top or the spaghetti straps, but I love that tiered skirt and that necklace is incredible.

Carolyn: The necklace is off center and I don’t want to look over there.

Gwen: This dress is wrong. I’m tempted to withhold judgment till I see the others, but that would mean I’m grading on a curve. NO. Say no to the dress.

Charlize Theron

Melinda: It’s falling off!

Carolyn: Lower the slit a few inches, woman, and pull your shoulder up.

Gwen: This is class gone bad.

Carolyn: She’s got legs for days.

Gwen: But I don’t want to see them for days, and after this I will. They’re like the white imprint of the sun after you stare at it.

Margot Robbie

Gwen: Eowyn in mourning! Did Aragorn just say no?

Carolyn: Once again we’re on trend for did-not-finish-the-upper-half-of-the-dress.

Gwen: And what’s with the stone of destiny?

Carolyn: I’m terrified it’s going to pull her dress off.

Kelsie: Weird sleeves.

Naomi: I don’t know, I kinda like them.

Ashley: It looks like they started out with a beautiful black dress, then kept adding stuff until it ended up looking more like a costume for Medieval Times. (Do not invest in the skirts-for-your-arms trend. It will not become a thing.)

Gwen: It’s bad anachronistic fan fiction. Medievals never had sleeves like that.

Cynthia Erivo

Collectively: OHHHHH

Carolyn: What the what??

Melinda: She has claws!

Carolyn: Brass knuckles.

Kelsie: And 17th century French hips.

Melinda: It looks like a bra and corset.

Gwen: Half a corset.

Carolyn: I hope she has cupholders in there.

Gwen: I’m thinking she’s got lots of tricep dips in her past.

Kelsie: Over the-top weird.

Carolyn: Anybody else notice we’re on a black-and-white trend?

Gwen: Everybody’s afraid of bubblegum pink after our critique last year.

Renée Zellweger

Everyone: Classy!!

Carolyn: Elegant. Her figure is knockout. I’m still sorry for her face.

Ashley: The dress is classic and sparkly without reading prom dress, and it fits her perfectly. This is a good dress.

Gwen: I like it. Stamp of approval. Except her sleeve is too long. I know because that’s how most sleeves look on me.

Gal Gadot

Carolyn: Oh honey, you know better than that.

Naomi: Cotton candy!

Kelsie: Looks like Cinderella’s dress after it got ripped by her step-sisters.

Naomi: Like Cinderella went through a goth phase.

Carolyn: This is a crime.

Melinda: But at least there are no capes.

Gwen: Oh they’re coming. I will prophesy.

Kristen Wiig

The whole room: OH MY BLEH HORROR MADNESS MURDER

Carolyn: Genuinely one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.

Naomi: You should stick to a carry-on, girl.

Gwen: Her train! That’s a tongue.

Melinda: You could make that dress with frosting.

Gwen: I want to stomp on its life source. It looks like a vital organ.

Carolyn: I think she’s coming as a right ventricle of the heart.

Gwen: I think she’s coming as a piece of anatomy I’m not going to print.

Brie Larson

Gwen: And…there’s your cape.

Naomi: There are pads in that dress.

Carolyn: Hate it, mostly because I hate every fiber of her being. “I’m sexy and I know it.” She looks like Jor-El’s wife.

Kelsie: Mother of the bride gone bad.

Gwen: It looks like those long vertical blinds, only some of them have forgotten how to close.

Melinda: Ooh, her shoes! They’re actually kinda gorgeous.

Camila Morrone

Gwen: I like it except for the wrinkled-mattress-cover bodice.

Naomi: It’s underwear.

Carolyn: It looks too big, sliding off.

Kelsie: She needs more from her necklace, given the simplicity of her dress.

Gwen: I do love her hair.

Rooney Mara

Everybody: EEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Gwen: She’s just been kissed by a Dementor!!

Kelsie: Those sleeves are so hideous.

Carolyn: Victorian goth.

Gwen: Steam punk on crack. You can see her floating ribs! She’s a cadaver. “And I’m making my first incision here…”

Carolyn: She looks like Miss Havisham in her youth.

Gwen: That bun is pulling her hair out, hence her resting B face.

Naomi: She’s not going for feminine beauty, she’s going for as weird as she can get.

Ashley: She looks like a ghost who just realized she’s been haunting the wrong house for a hundred years and is suddenly feeling lost and embarrassed.

Gwen: Well at least she doesn’t have to worry about getting bit by a rabid bat or anything. If she got bit, she wouldn’t even bleed.

Léa Seydoux

Gwen: This is bad theology in a gown. Her dress has an identity crisis.

Carolyn: They spliced a photograph.

Kelsie: She gets points for calmer hair.

Carolyn: She like she’s standing in the remains of the tablecloth from the appetizer table.

Melinda: At least she’s covered up. But she’s so fit, she needs a softer dress. It’s so severe.

Carolyn: Well, she is French.

Natalie Portman

Gwen: Oh my heavens.

Naomi: CAPE!

Carolyn: Queen Amidala is back!

Gwen: The karate chop of her hair above those 80s shoulder pads!! Her stylist had a brain hernia trying to squeeze in all these bad ideas. Is that sheer? Are those legs?

Carolyn: I think that’s the hyper drive in action.

Saoirse Ronan

All of us: Alhgaoeishaegbleeekgagpukevomitwailowwwwwww

Carolyn: Ursula! But slimmer.

Ashley: She’s so beautiful—why does she always end up in a dress that makes her look drab or crazy??? This one is on the crazy end of the spectrum, because of the bizarre mix of materials. What is up with that shiny periwinkle blue fabric?

Kelsie: It looks like curtains.

Carolyn: I hate that kind of taffeta because it looks like wood grain.

Gwen: The Blitzkrieg is making alarming headway towards her navel.

Ashley: This dress leaves me with so many questions and provides zero answers.

Salma Hayek

Carolyn: Meh. It’s better than the last couple years which were dumpster fire dresses. It’s pretty classy for her.

Gwen: Whatever. It’s fine. Salma’s mostly about curves and jawline anyway.

Kelsie: Is that a feather? Or is that her hair?

Carolyn: A fastener?

Gwen: A mystery not worth solving.

Penelope Cruz

Melinda: That’s kinda cute.

Kelsie: The silhouette is very nice.

Carolyn: The top is too big, it’s gapping right off. Like the girls selling popcorn in the lobby. But she does look like a million bucks.

Gwen: After the mission failures of the others, I’m unreasonably grateful for this “meh” dress and I resent that.

Margaret Qualley

Carolyn: All the black and white? Is that a thing for 2020?

Gwen: Maybe they’re copying Pelosi? In mourning over the impeachment?

Kelsie: Her dress looks like a beetle. Look. Two little antenna.

Carolyn: Or a moth.

Gwen: Now I can’t unsee it. Moths are the devil’s dust bunnies.

Melinda: It’s actually modest.

Carolyn: The shape is nice.

Gwen: I don’t mind it, terribly. It’s a do-no-harm dress versus a felony dress.

Sandra Oh

Carolyn: GOOD. NIGHT.

Gwen: There are GROWTHS on that dress!

Carolyn: 70s bath mat.

Naomi: I don’t know. Looks cool to me.

Melinda: Those sleeves are an exotic dancer.

Carolyn: Or a toilet plunger. Scrub it out! Scutcha scutcha.

Gwen: Anne of Green Gables could live in those sleeves.

Naomi: I think it’s cool.

Gwen: Just because you just painted those flowers on a wedding cake yesterday doesn’t mean SHE should do it on a skirt.

Rebel Wilson

Gwen: It’s a pretty dress, but her face! She is staring down some poisonous fate.

Carolyn: She’s tense because it could fall at any moment. I like the sparkle, but with her blonde hair, maybe black would be better?

Oliva Coleman

Carolyn: I adore blue velvet because I’m a sucker for blue velvet. What I am not a sucker for are the eyeball-cape moments.

Naomi: But capes are so cool.

Carolyn: Well they are, but then you take them off.

Gwen: No capes!

Kelly Marie Tran

Carolyn: Again, ladies, two dresses put together. It’s like a football team where offense and defense aren’t talking to each other.

Kelsie: Looks like she has a bustle in the back.

Carolyn: And probably a couple sofas and an ottoman.

Gwen: This is a total typo from top to bottom.

Carolyn: The Oscar stylists need to hire us because I’d be like, no. Gross find. Let’s do something else.

Caitriona Balfe

Carolyn: Who MADE this mistake?

Gwen: Somebody stole unlabeled bottles from Snape’s potion closet, frothed them together for a month, and this degenerate mutant came out.

Melinda: But guys, at least it’s modest.

Gwen: It’s brain sludge, Mel.

Laura Dern

People: OHHHHHH

Naomi: Everyone’s wearing the 90s!

Kelsie: Looks like something you’d find at Goodwill.

Gwen: It’s the Great Depression plus pastel 50s optimism at the same time.

Ashley: It’s two different dresses put together. The black tassels look like they were stolen off some Victorian curtains in a house of mourning.

Melinda: It’s a cake with the chocolate dripping down.

Carolyn: A 50-something woman in a 50s prom dress in the Midwest. (Sorry Indiana.)

Mindy Kaling

Gwen: Wow. This is beautiful. I like this a lot. The cut, color, asymmetry.

Carolyn: The style really looks good at her.

Kelsie: Similar to Rebel’s but she’s pulling it off.

Carolyn: And it isn’t falling off!

Naomi: Looks like a saree. I love sarees.

Ashley: This is one of my favorites. The bright color is gorgeous on her, the shape is sculptural and elegant, and that diamond necklace needs to be viewed through sunglasses. (For the Academy Awards, if you aren’t wearing millions of dollars worth of other people’s jewelry, what are you even doing? I would go just to be able to borrow Cartier.)

Carolyn: Mindy, you’re my win so far.

Scarlet Johansson

Carolyn: Baby! Come on. Every year, I mean every year, somebody tries to imitate the Oscar statute.

Melinda: It needs more.

Carolyn: She should hang out with Florence Pugh. “Hey look, neither of our seamstresses finished our dresses.”

Ashley: Her top looks like it will unravel into a pile of threads if it snags on anything. If she hugs Laura Dern, it’s all over.

Gwen: I’m a fan of her Malibu tan, compared to Rooney’s rigor-mortis bleachness.

Naomi: I don’t want to see her belly.

Gwen: I wish not to see it as well.

Sigourney Weaver

Carolyn: Oh hey! Except for the curtain rope tie…

Melinda: At least it’s modest.

Carolyn: But the rope tie! Her eyeballs are manic.

Naomi: Why are you hating on her face? She can’t help her face.

Gwen: Her eye balls are always manic, she can’t help it.

Carolyn: The color is nice, that’s all I can say for it.

Gwen: Some women are angular without being thin. She needs to realize she is one of those women. There’s nothing wrong with dressing your age, honey. Dressing gowns are OUT.

Idina Menzel

Gwen: Well somebody finally wore color.

Carolyn: Yes and we’re wishing she hadn’t.

Gwen: At least it’s one dress. (Our bar is so low!)

Billy Porter

The whole earth: GACCKKKK

Gwen: My eyes! Where’s the disinfectant?

Melinda: It’s a big no-no.

Gwen: This is dystopia in a dress.

Kelsie: Right out of Hunger Games.

Ashley: It looks like the rise AND fall of the Roman Empire.

Gwen: He’s just been cast as the fairy-godmother in the next Cinderella movie. Bibbidi-bobbidi-BOMB. I can’t wait to not see it.

Carolyn: I want to punch him in his little face.

Gwen: My TV is $700, so if it’s worth $700 for you, you may totally go punch my TV.

In sum

Gwen: 2020 may have been better than 2019, but that’s like saying vomit is better than abscess drainage.

Carolyn: Overall, it’s like the 90s took an acid trip.

Melinda: I think we need to not go back to the 90s.

Kelsie: Lots of weird sleeves. And people need to wear dresses that suit their age.

Carolyn: But at least with all black and white we were saved from last year’s eye mutilation with all the Pepto-Bismol. We did prove that our bar is low enough to step over.

Gwen: So were some of the necklines.

Carolyn: You can tell we’re in a culture that has given all standards away.

Naomi: What standards?

Carolyn: Actually wearing a dress would be a start.

 

PC: https://www.vogue.com/vogueworld/slideshow/oscars-2020-fashion-red-carpet