You don’t want to trip on your dress when you go on stage to receive your award for Best Actress. Even more unwanted is the dress that threatens to come off. The usual sartorial dramas at the Oscars

Emma Stone showing the coming apart of her dress before delivering her acceptance speech. Photo: ABC

Even Louis Vuitton could make a dress that does not hold up during the most important night of American cinema. In a palest-of-greens LV bustier-gown, Emma Stone had, this morning (our time), gone on stage to receive the Oscar for Best Actress in her performance as Bella Baxter in Poor Things. But before she could make it to the steps, she realised that the fitted bustier part of her gown was coming apart, but she braved the journey. At the top of the stage, she mouthed to the five presenters: “My dress, my dress is broken.” It was 74-year-old Jessica Lange who came forward to help her. The rest stood still, seemingly shocked by the situation that Ms Stone found herself in, but were mostly helpless. Michelle Yeoh, holding the statuette and waiting to give it to the troubled actress, could have thought it was a joke: She was laughing. And laughing. It seemed, at the time, that the fastening (which appeared to be a row of hook and eye) on the centre-back seam in the rear broke or came off near the waist. It was not clear if it could be re-fastened.

This was the second dress—light-coloured and strapless—by labels under the LVMH Group that had caused young actresses problems as they went on stage on Oscar night to receive their Best Actress award. In 2013, Jennifer Lawrence, wearing Dior to receive her statuette for her performance in Silver Linings Playbook, tripped on the stairs when “the fabric from my dress tucked under my feet”, as she told the media about the mishap a year later. The bodice of Ms Stone’s dress coming apart might have been less dangerous than a fall, but it was no less embarrassing for a moment of immense glory. Like Ms Lawrence, her response to the dress failure was good-natured. She attributed it to rigorously responding to Ryan Gosling’s nominated song I’m Just Ken. “I’m pretty sure,” she affirmed. Despite her dress trouble, Ms Stone was, in that simple peplumed gown, one of the better-attired actresses of the night. And she looked fresh, which is hard to pull off on a red carpet. Before she left the stage, she instructed, “Don’t look at the back of my dress”. We, of course, looked harder.

John Cena’s muscles-are-all-you-need moment. Screen shot: ABC

The other fashion moment on stage was one when no fashion was involved at all: John Cena appearing nude, apparently to mark the 50th anniversary of a stunning stunt when a streaker ran down the stage at the 46th Academy Awards in 1974. Initially Mr Cena said he didn’t want to do “the streaker bit”, but eventually appeared in nothing except pool slides on his feet and the winner’s envelope to cover his streaker bit to present the Best Costume category. Before standing in front of the audience and a visibly delighted Margot Robbie, Mr Cena said, “The male body is not supposed to be funny.” Host Jimmy Kimmel rejoined: “Mine is.” We wondered if they could have pulled off the segment with women. Could Margot Robbie, for example, be persuaded to show that she was really all flesh and not plastic? Mr Cena was admirably brave and a good sport.

Off-stage, specifically on the red carpet, the action was a lot tamer. All the dresses held up; they looked the Oscar-night gowns they were worn to be. No one took risks with their dress choices (they were better at taking risks in their movie roles) or offered surprises. Most went for the tired trope—old Hollywood glamour. Or, pallid post-strike prestige. (There were two simultaneous strikes last year as writers and actors took a stand against technology replacing their jobs and big studios who did not, at first, budge much.) Possibly happy that the street protests were over, the stars took to the red carpet (after last year’s inexplicable ‘champagne’, it was back to the traditional colour) with the courage of crew, rather than cast, strutting their stuff. Margot Robbie, for example, was determined to shake off even the slightest hint of Barbie, but ended looking as if she was mourning the end—at last!—of the portrayal she was best not to extend.

Best Looks of the Night

While this was not going to be a vintage year for the red carpet looks on the night of the Oscars, some actresses were pleasing to the eye, if not exactly deeply impressionable for the memory. Still, it was not quite “a parade of breathing-taking gowns”, as one magazine gleefully exaggerated. It should be noted that what Americans consider “best-dressed” may not necessarily match what many in Asia deem striking. Actresses still preferred ‘safe’ than sorry, and would go for the body-hugging or the princess-seeming. And if an “unglamorous” pattern were to be used, be prepared to be condemned to the badly-dressed bunch.

Clockwise from top left: Carey Mulligan. Photo: Getty Images. Zendaya. Photo: Wire Images. Michelle Yeoh. Photo: Getty Images. Andrea Riseborough. Photo: AP

Carey Mulligan In Balenciaga

That Carey Mulligan would do very old world glamour was unsurprising. She pulled it off with a reproduction of a dress that Cristobal Balenciaga designed in 1951. The bi-coloured mermaid gown with a scalloped edge that frame the tulle train was clearly a choice so that she could make a spectacular entrance should she win the best actress Oscar for her role as Felicia Montealegre Bernstein Maestro.

Zendaya in Armani Prive

Zendaya often does take risk for her red carpet appearances. But this time, she preferred something a lot safer, and no label more so that Armani Price. Perhaps it was the night of the Oscars, and no one would be advised to wear the likes of the dress Björk chose for her 2001 appearance. Regardless, the one-shoulder asymmetric gown worked on Zendaya, and she exuded the glamour that sometimes her funkier choices on other red carpets did not permit.

Andrea Riseborough in Loewe

This one has been divisive. Andrea Riseborough’s choice of the fresh-off-the-runway Loewe dress was deemed as controversial as her Oscar nomination for best actress last year. Many people thought the gown to be blah and that tartan was never destined for the red carpet. They voted her the “worst-dressed”. We beg to differ. Actresses do no frequently pull off what models wear on the runway, but Ms Riseborough looked elegant, even regal.

Michelle Yeoh in Balenciaga

It was, perhaps, a smart move that Michelle Yeoh signed with Balenciaga last year. Dior failed her when she took the Oscar for best actress in 2023. That white froth was, to us, hardly leading actress garb, let alone an Oscar winner’s. (And, now we remember, the inexplicably limp hair.) (Also look at Jennifer Lawrence’s I-borrowed-Auntie-Dotty’s gown, also by Dior.) This year, Ms Yeoh picked something that had far more design merit, with an intriguing, seemingly back-half-twisted-to-the-front bodice. Simply put, she looked good.

Send them Home to Change

Many should be offered a Uber ride to back where they readied themselves for the earlier-than-usual Oscar night, but some were more egregious in their choices than other. Even the less offensive ones made strange choices. It is heartening to see Margot Robbie breaking out of her Barbie dress trap, but going straight into a simple black Versace dress that seemed to be shaped after a cockroach is just mystifying. The usually reliable Emily Blunt stumped us too. Did the first-time nominee wear her husband’s Y-fronts and feared we would not know, and, therefore, had the outline of the briefs made visible on her Schiaparelli gown with the shoulder straps in a perpetual shrug? Did she not learn anything from The Devil Wears Prada?

Clockwise from top: Ariana Grande, Erika Alexander, Cynthia Erivo. All photos: Getty Images

Ariana Grande in Giambattista Vali

Barbie and Jiggly Puff rolled into one? Ariana Grande usually does pink and cute well, but this time, it was sweetly adorable from the backstage of Drag Race. With a petite frame, it was not clear why she needed that much fabric to stand out or why her car’s safety bag was not left in the vehicle. Nor why she had to prove that she was thin enough to slip knot that ruched inner dress, which looked like a cheap sausage roll.

Erika Alexander in Christian Siriano

Her tres simple main dress given to her by a relative after the latter’s wedding was just that—too simple to be remarkable or to top the other Oscar attendees. So, clever Erika Alexander went to the trunk under her bed, where she kept her birthday dress from when she was 12, and then got her grandmother to make a bigger version for her so that she could wear it over the pale nothing. Brilliant.

Cynthia Erivo in Louis Vuitton

How did Louis Vuitton go from Emma Stone’s sculptural calmness to Cynthia Erivo’s green monstrosity? Now this was the most interesting to us. Cynthia Erivo was not in the cast of Godzilla Minus One, which received the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, yet she saw it appropriate to dress as Gojira’s sister. You can’t say that was not inclusive.