Last night was the Critics Choice Association’s 7th Annual Celebration of Black Cinema and Television, which brought out a cavalcade of stars, including honorees Regina King, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, John David Washington, Natasha Rothwell, Jharrel Jerome, Ryan Destiny, and Cynthia Erivo. You can see the full list of honorees here.
I mostly want to discuss Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor out-Elphaba’ing Elphaba herself with this voluminous green dress. Ellis-Taylor has shown herself to be an adventurous fashion girlie in the past, this outfit is pretty much par for the course. That’s not a criticism, we need adventurous dressers to keep red carpet events interesting, and Aunjanue has gone full-Elphaba here, if Elphaba were like, dressing for a sleepover. This outfit is very pajama coded, minus the headpiece and gloves.
As for Cynthia, perhaps after almost a year of theme dressing, and with Wicked: Part 2 to promote next year, she is ready to let it rest for a minute and let someone else shine in green. Although she is still cutting a rather witchy silhouette with those long sleeves and the glittering train of her dress. But it’s a lower key version of theme dressing, if that’s what we’re calling this. After the intense press run for Wicked, this feels quite toned down. Or maybe my perception has been permanently damaged by the Wicked press tour. What even is normal red carpet dressing anymore?
PS: For some reason, Jeremy Piven was there????
