Genevieve Valentine Continues to Deliver Great Red Carpet Commentary

For both the Golden Globes https://www.genevievevalentine.com/2020/01/red-carpet-rundown-the-2020-golden-globes

and the Oscars https://www.genevievevalentine.com/2020/02/red-carpet-rundown-the-2020-oscars

and these are just as funny and insightful as her previous analyses of the political messaging fashion accomplishes

Janelle Monáe, in the dress of the night.

Strictly speaking, it’s isn’t an Oscar dress; this is a statement outfit that deliberately doesn’t much care about Oscar traditions and style precedents. At this point Janelle Monáe is a pro at using fashion as costume – specifically, in outfits like this, to present a speculative figure and encourage the viewer to think, Why Not. As soon as she appeared in this, Twitter was all over the place talking about Star Wars queens and gem wizards and glam robots, and that’s the whole aim of this look; to point out how easy such things are for people to imagine, as soon as they see it. It’s a meta-text about narrative, just with 170,000 sparkles. (Actual number of sparkles, someone checked.)

( The queen of the galaxy dress in images and words )