Mock this dress.
I dare you.
Complain about the gorgeous colour. The ingenuity of macaws (hat tip to Sarah) ready to tear it up over her clavicle and chestbone – no, don’t look at that dress and tell me those birds are peaceful. They are not. They are ready to GO.
Tell me that this dress is over the top. That it’s too ridiculous or something. To you I say, where in the hell do you suppose she was going, to the drugstore? Do you get the impression she was in any way feeling overdressed or something?
You guys. This is what Nicole Kidman was born to do. Since the days of the Olive/Chartreuse Dior she has worn bananas things that are also very excellent on the red carpet because that is exactly where you wear them. Put it this way, if you’re the designer of this dress, is there anywhere else you ever envisioned this dress going? Like if you were on Project Runway, and you had to make the story of the dress – this would be what it was. “Slightly eccentric red-carpet mainstay in third decade of fame wears it to an awards show where she will not win.” That’s the best possible outcome for this dress! You think it looks a little crazy, the shreds over the arms and the folds of the skirt implying that the birds actually fought over it a little bit? That’s not a bug, it’s a feature!
What do we get if she dresses up ‘less’? Zero. Zero fun, zero dress porn, and no markers in the books of fashion – which are things they actually used to print!—of particularly notable outfits, which is half the reason we watch these things because otherwise they could just release the list of the winners online or something ridiculous. Like Natalie Portman, Kidman knows she’s not winning anything – so she just gets to have fun, and lets us have fun with her!
This is a joy in dark times. I’m not trying to be flip, I am dead serious. There are enough things happening that are terrible, that we should get our diversion and entertainment from a little whimsy in the form of a two-bird dress with a trail of sequins that I hope follows her all the way through every afterparty and the In-N-Out drive-thru to boot.
