The hair and make-up that sashayed down the red carpet and sat attentively in the auditorium at the Academy Awards this year deserves little praise, I’m afraid. And I say so with great sadness, for what’s an awards season without a good solid dose of inspiring, if completely unattainable, beauty?
On the whole the ladies played it safe - too safe –, sticking to a seen-it-before repertoire that, sure, may have conjured a gasp the first time round, but now…? Boring! Thankfully there were a few pretty young things to break-up all the frightful blandness. Carey Mulligan, Diane Kruger and Amanda Seyfried provided us with something other than a dodgy up-do and hastily applied highlighter - surprise, surprise European designers dressed them.
On the other hand there was a hell of a lot of messy chignons and tiresome side swept sets going on. Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet and Sandra Bullock were all seen sporting a similar style, which reeked of old-Hollywood glamour minus a contemporary touch. Bullock’s was, to be fair, the most successful rendition (brushed out and glossy, it was by far the more modern of the three) yet it was still by no means something we’d really love to wear.
Make-up generally comprised of two looks: a flick of eyeliner with a nude lip or the same eyeliner coupled with a lip of the red variety. Skin, as I mentioned, was covered from top to toe with luminizer, highlighter, shimmer and gloss. Bronzers and fake tanners were ubiquitous too.
It was the men that were the standouts this year - no doubt about it - with the likes of Sam Worthington, Robert Downey Jnr, Jake Gyllenhaal, Taylor Lautner, Jeremy Renner, George Clooney, Tom Ford, Lenny Kravitz and my favourite, Alec Baldwin, all looking seriously smoking in their tuxedos - many provided by Ford himself. It was nice to see them arrive a little unkempt, with beards or stubble (albeit clippered) and loose hair rather than the overly slicked, overly groomed styles of previous years. Too bad their girls let them down.