Gwyneth Paltrow's Oscar Dress
When you look back at the annals of Oscar-winning fashion…there really isn’t that much pink. Not among the Best Actress winners, anyways.
Shirley MacLaine wore a salmon dress suit, Sally Field had a
pink shift shirt, and then Gwyneth Paltrow showed up in a baby pink ballgown when
she won for Shakespeare in Love and helped bring pink back into fashion.
On the red carpet, Gwyneth said “If you think about how much people are talking about something as silly as a dress, I think it would make me absolutely incapable of leaving the house. So I just tuned it all out and wore what I thought was pretty.”
It’s almost like she was the original Barbie girl, to tie it
all into the current fashion landscape. There’s something Grace Kelly-esque
about the taffeta gown: spaghetti straps, full skirt, and pastel colouring. Add
in the $160,000 worth of Harry Winston jewellery and the Manolo Blahnik sandals
and you have the second coming of Hollywood royalty.
And here’s the kicker: according to Gwyneth, she didn’t work
with a stylist to make this happen. She says she picked it out herself after looking
through the Ralph Lauren lookbook.
In a video for Vogue, where she walked through some
of her most famous fashion moments, Gwyneth recalled: “It's a funny story
because it was in the days before stylists and I had been looking through the
Ralph Lauren look book and in the show they'd had this pink bubblegum taffeta
skirt.
“And I was like, Oh, that's very me. So I called and I
said, ‘Could I borrow this for the Oscars?’ And they said, ‘Well we'd like to
make you something.’ Which was thrilling. And so they made me this beautiful
dress and I love it.”
The gown Gwyneth saw had a corset-style bodice that was swapped
out to the simple v-neck bodice. She said in interviews that she just wanted to
“look really sweet” on the red carpet, and this Ralph Lauren concoction
definitely does that.
But it’s not a simple matter of baby pink splattering into fashion
history. It was, and still is, divisive. Gwyneth’s mother, Blythe Danner, reportedly
hated this gown. I couldn’t find an answer as to whether it’s grown on
her in the past 25 years, but if you find it, leave a comment!
Some commentators thought the baby pink was juvenile, appealing
to the tweens and teens watching (believe me, if I’d been old enough to sit up
and watch the Oscars at the time, I would’ve been all over this gown),
but it earned points for its simple design and, of course, for Gwyneth’s star
power.
Pink came back as a fashion trend because of Gwyneth. A
store owner in Connecticut gave an interview about pink, saying that “Paltrow
made the color cool. And Paltrow's Oscar dress turned into the number one prom
dress style of the year thanks to ABS and Allen Schwartz, who is famous for
making low-priced copies of Oscar dresses.”
You can find more details of Gwyneth’s dress on its own Wikipedia page.
The stunning jewelry Gwyneth wore with this pastel
perfection was a gift from her father, Bruce Paltrow, who was a famous director.
Gwyneth was very close with her father, and he sadly passed away 2002 from
complications due to cancer and pneumonia. Gwyneth wore the jewelry at her 2018
wedding to Brad Falchuk as a way to include him on her wedding day.
In 2015, Gwyneth revealed that she has kept all of her Oscar
gowns and has been saving them for her daughter, Apple Martin, to do with what
she will. Including repurposing them, if that’s what she wants.
“Maybe she’ll wear it to prom and do a Pretty in Pink
thing and resew it and cut it up,” Gwyneth said.
In 2019, Karen Elson, an English model, appeared in the Ralph
Lauren gown for an InStyle editorial. On her Instagram she wrote that
Gwyneth’s gown was one of the most iconic red carpet looks, but Gwyneth herself
commented: “You wore it better.”
And you’d think that’d be it, but Gwyneth brought back this
gown once more last year for the holiday promotions for her Goop lifestyle
brand. In the video, multiple Gwyneths appear around the dinner table, and they’re
all wearing iconic clothing from her fashion past. Including that stunning
gown, down to the same simple slicked back ponytail.
What are your thoughts? I personally love the pink, but I’d love
to hear your take!
And we're skipping all discussion of Gwyneth's Oscar speech. I know I'd be just as over the top and emotional if I won the top award in the world for my line of work, but it feels very vulnerable to comment on, it was obviously a big moment for her (not to mention what we've learned since about that whole time period in her life...).
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