Nearly a decade after Giuliana Rancic infamously made racially insensitive remarks about Zendaya’s 2015 Oscars look, she’s reflecting on Zendaya’s career and how fashion reporting has “evolved”. During a conversation with PEOPLE, Giuliana touted her talent and her “amazing fanbase”, saying:
"She's incredible…I think it's always fun to watch people from the beginning and then you see how they grow both in their work and also in every aspect of their career."
Giuliana went on to discuss the shift in demand for style opinions and commentary, which, she says, has definitely changed in recent years.
"I think that we're at a place now where we just want to see the fashion," she told the outlet. "I remember when that started changing and fashion wasn't going to be the focus on the red carpet as much."
While the appetite for style opinions and commentary may have undergone a shift, is Giuliana’s assertion that fashion reporting has undergone a shift, too? And if so, what’s caused that change?
According to this brilliant GQ article, writer Eileen Cartter says that up until 2021, Hollywood fashion was “mostly a women’s game”. Her thesis is that being a good actor is no longer enough to keep a man a Hollywood star. And with more and more men realizing the importance of making headlines for the work they do onscreen and for their outfit choices off of it, they have finally started taking fashion more seriously, an idea Sarah explored earlier this year in her piece about Fashion Men.
Back in 2015, Reese Witherspoon took issue with the routine red carpet interviews where she and so many other women celebrities were asked the age-old question about what or who they were wearing. Just as the men were being asked, she, too, wanted to be asked about her creative endeavours, instead, or at least in addition to being asked about her couture. So ahead of the Oscars, she took to social media to let people know that she would not be revealing the designer of her dress on the red carpet, instead revealing that it was Tom Ford later that evening via Twitter. More importantly, though, she made a plea for journalists to #AskHerMore, earning the support of many fans and celebrities alike who co-signed and amplified her call, one that would also be echoed by Blake Lively and other (mostly white) women celebrities, including Lena Dunham.
“This is a movement to say we’re more than just our dresses,” Reese told Robin Roberts at the time during the pre-show. “There are 44 nominees this year that are women and we are so happy to be here and talk about the work that we’ve done. It’s hard being a woman in Hollywood, or any industry.”
When the pandemic forced a major shift, evaporating the “rules of celebrity menswear”, as Eileen puts it in her piece, men and reporters alike have been focusing more on male fashion. And though this has given the illusion that there is more equity in fashion coverage, there’s still a lot in inequity. In the midst of what, by all accounts, appears to be an issue of gender, there is also the issue of race. Because you know who can’t complain about having to talk fashion? The Black and Indigenous stars who never got an invite to the red carpet in the first place.
As unnatural as it may be to imagine a red carpet without Zendaya, this was very much her reality and the reality of so many other Black actors who were snubbed both on and off the stage. She recently sat down with Vogue to break down 23 of her looks – outfits from Euphoria, Dune, and of course, the 2015 Oscars. During the conversation, she revealed the unconventional way she gained access to the red carpet that night, saying:
“I didn’t have any kind of credentials or anything. I kind of snuck onto the red carpet.”
When given the opportunity, Black celebrities revel in talking about fashion, and they often use the opportunity to spotlight Black fashion designers, much like Lewis Hamilton did at the 2021 Met Gala. And Laverne Cox enjoys it so much that she became the new host of E!’s red carpet coverage, replacing Giuliana after her retirement, hosting and serving looks at the same time.
While Reese’s point about wanting deeper dialogue is not entirely unfounded, the issue with it is twofold. First, that complaint can only be made from a place of power, privilege and access. She was only able to critique the red carpet because she had been invited to it. Second, though, Reese was complaining about part of the job. Fashion is part of the work.
The shift in fashion coverage equity begs a few questions. First, the question of whether the change in fashion reporting has been brought on by a genuine shift in consciousness. Or is it all just a camouflage that simply discourages the kind of culture and commentary we saw on Fashion Police. Secondly, what this means for the conversation about hair. Because Giuliana’s comment about Zendaya wasn’t so much about her dress as it was her hairstyle of faux loc extensions. And lastly, while men may be upping the ante on their fashion, giving reporters more to work with and discuss, how much ante is there to up when it comes to their hair? This discrepancy leaves women, mostly the ones of colour, to bear the brunt of hair commentary, even if they are finally being invited to the red carpet.
Earlier this week I wrote about Sunny Hostin’s revelations about her choice to finally don her natural hair on The View. The story she shared followed a very similar pattern to what many women of colour have described experiencing when it comes to their hairstyle choices – being deemed less professional, less qualified, less beautiful.
At every turn, we see Black - and in Sunny’s case, afro-Latina - women’s hair being policed. In Zendaya’s case back in 2015, Giuliana equated something as simple as a hairstyle choice with the possibility of her being a drug user. And those implications reached far beyond just Zendaya, simultaneously insulting and perpetuating negative stereotypes to an entire culture of people who live with locked hair, which, in many cases, serves as a symbol of their Rastafarian lifestyle and beliefs. Other times it’s simply just a hairstyle.
As for whether Giuliana has learned her lesson, it’s anyone’s guess. After retiring from E! in 2021, she’s shifted her focus to designing clothes and home goods in a line she has for HSN. But the response she provided to PEOPLE when she was asked about her favourite looks from this year’s award season has proven that she’d much rather play it safe.
"Everyone's been looking great. Seriously, who doesn't kill it right now?" she said.
Valiant effort, but she’s clearly lying through her teeth, because there are a lot of celebrities that don’t “kill it”. There are hits and there are misses, and discussing both is what can make fashion reporting fun and insightful. True, honest fashion reporting can acknowledge the hits and the misses in a way that isn’t harmful. But if the solution to fears of being cancelled or made a spectacle of, much like Giuliana was over her insensitive remarks in 2015, is to simply praise and laud the looks of everyone, fashion reporting could become not only irrelevant, but devastating to an entire industry of designers banking on the impact a celebrity mention on the red carpet could mean for their brand.
The point of all of this is to remind people that words matter. And as careful and sensitive as journalists have been trained to be in news reporting and interviewing, it’s an important lesson to carry over to fashion reporting. Because fashion is important. It’s artistic. And it’s part of the job.
