Dear Gossips,

The Oscars red carpet can sometimes be a little on the boring side compared to the carpets at other award shows. People take fewer risks, because of the prestige of the Oscars, the tradition of the Academy, and the ostensible formality of the occasion. But, you know, when a slap goes down on stage on live television the year before, I dunno, maybe an avant-garde outfit doesn’t seem like such a big deal anymore. Which is to say that the fashion last night was actually a lot more fun than it usually is.

The other factor here, of course, is that after three years of pandemic, this was a return to the Oscars as we knew them – a loooooong ass carpet, full court media press – and people decided to get extra splashy with their looks. I’m not complaining, because looking at clothes is fun… but maybe we didn’t see the same thing, because with that champagne carpet and the terrible lighting that the Academy provided, the clothes, or so I’ve heard from Sarah and Duana, many of the outfits did not pop on television and in pictures the way they popped in person. There were a few occasions where both of them were like, ugh, what is this dress, and I had to be the asshole all like, well, actually, I’m looking at it right in front of me and it’s great, the colour is amazing. In other words, that friend who finds every opportunity to tell you they were somewhere and you weren’t. Which is what I’m doing now, and why you just rolled your eyes at me.

My point though, I swear, is that the lighting was indeed sh-tty. And that’s such a mystery to me because everybody knows, especially the Academy, that the red carpet is the big draw. Why wouldn’t they provide the best light possible for all these beautiful and famous people coming to their party?!

But you know whose look was so good that even the bad lighting couldn’t take away from it?

Fan Bingbing. Pretty sure she’s on every best dressed Oscar list today for this dress with the billowing bright green sleeves and those spectacular earrings. I swear I could hear a gasp from the moment she showed up at the drop-off point. People who didn’t know who she is were scrambling to ID her. And then of course when they realised who she was…

Fan Bingbing was disappeared, remember? There was a tax scandal in 2018, pretty much at the height of her career. Fan Bingbing was probably the most famous actress in China. And then she was gone, for several months, and fined an amount that was muuuuuuch more than what she allegedly hid from the Chinese government, like a crazy f-cking amount, and has kept a super low profile since then.

She’s back now, though, and was just at the Berlinale a couple of weeks ago promoting a new film, calling this her “restart”. Which means following up her appearance in Berlin with a showstopping appearance at the Oscars (wearing Tony Ward). Whether or not that will be successful in the long term remains to be seen. In the short term, there definitely was an impact. It’s the power of a good dress.

We’ll talk more about dresses and moments from the Oscars through the day.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

Fan Bingbing Gossip

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