Shall I Trash The Red Carpet Again? - Oh Go On Then!

My first reaction to the 2012 Oscar modes (that's what a big dressy number was called in my day) was not to bother. This year I just didn't feel physically sick at any point in scrolling along the Red Carpet and really loved some of the dresses.  Then I realised how much the hairdo contributes to the YES/MAYBE/ SORRY DEAR/BE OFF WITH YOU ratings.


Here are my winners for getting it right top to toe:

 Gwyneth Paltro,  perfect ivory column inches in Tom Ford and she's axed her folk singer's middle parting, hallelujah.  Commendable restraint in focusing her jewellery at the bottom of one arm.

 Ah, Penelope Cruz looking fabulously 50s in the sort of dress my mother didn't quite wear, I wish she

had.  Love the MGM Studios hair style and the soft blue chiffon used to its very best effect. Some may be disappointed that she's not channelling primal sex here but the  look produces in me a low groan of envy and delight. 

 More vintage glamour from Milla Jovovic in Elie Saab. Not just soignée but smouldering. 

This is just one of those magnificent surprises that stops you in your tracks. Emma Stone, pitch perfect

in fluid Giambattista Valli.  Big retro halter neckline shows off lovely shoulders, jawline, eyeliner, eyebrows.  Titian hair a non-clash clash with cherry red. Well-judged jewellery.  

[Come on, that's enough! Ed.]

This Louis Vuitton is another front runner for the gorgeous vermilion chiffon with the pink clutch, oh oh.  The little diamond bow is perfect but I'm just blocking out the defeatist necklace and realising that's what's very slightly annoying.  Less is generally more and  Michelle Williams gamine hair does cut it. Charmant.  But talking French...

Uh oh.  I am afraid there's some cognitive dissonance between this relentlessly ingenue hairstyle (or has she just forgotten to take the pins out?) and the concert party diva's gown.  Better not go on.. Mais quel dommage, Berenice Bejo dans votre Elie Saab.

Nobody loves a piece of 1950s Christian Dior couture more than I do.  But why does Natalie Portman look so high-school prom and prim in this?  I think it's the damn hairstyle again - lovely in itself, but had she done a Cruz or a Jovovic she would have looked a million dollars.  And that ice. Just looks like she's borrowed Mummy's necklace. All wrong, all wrong. Sorreee.

We're in the Box of Chocolates merchandising category here.  Ellie Kemper in Armani and..

 And lovely old Meryl Streep doing Ferrero Rocher a good turn. Or is that Terry's All Gold?

Isn't that dress going to fall off her right shoulder sometime soon?

Talking of which. This is one of my favourite colours which suits Missi Pyle's  colouring nicely and can only really work in georgette.  But the just-out-of-bed hair somehow reinforces the top notes of Sears Catalogue negligée in this odd design by Valentina Delfino. It's something about the last section that gives an expectation of maribou trimmed mules.

Apparently this fabric was made 'without cruelty to silk-worms'. (Is that because it's

polyester?) 

Jury's out on the transgressive angel look here.  I do get it, particularly the severe hairline and the red lips with the gossamer fabric, but just to be annoying - can anyone say just exactly what's wrong with the bustline?  Perhaps it just doesn't fit?  That's Rooney Mara in Givenchy.

 I can't improve on this being 'the colour of old bras'. I wish I 'd

thought of that but it was Tom + Lorenzo here.  Click on them for a really funny tilt at the Red Carpet. Kristen Wiig in J. Mendel being mildly subversive by doing the careless dressing-up box thing. It looks as if it smells of mothballs.

Ouch, there had to be an undisputed booby prize. Does Busy Phillips in Dolce & Gabbana remind anyone else of a parking lot?  Worn tarmac and something-reminiscent-of-a-crash-barrier earrings and bracelet.  Who chose the shoes at random?  Finally I have to agree with Tom + Lorenzo about the bad hair styling.

Wimbledon Style

Oh dear, I had such a reactionary moment watching Serena Williams play Victoria Azarenka at Wimbledon today.

I am very conflicted about womens' tennis these days which is probably why I don't watch it very much. This afternoon, however, I sat down in a shady room and decided to give it my all. Did, I? No I didn't. I used up half my concentration getting unreasonably cross with Azarenka for pinching somebody else's top in the locker room and hitching it up with a couple of safetypins. Then, because it may not have been her fault, I imagined writing a rebuke to Nike for making this quite attractive woman look and feel such a mess that she went out in straight sets.

Look at this, look, look.. what is that band of elastic above her tits all about? It is integral with the shoulder straps but its sporting attempt at deconstructing neckline styles fails fails fails. At the back, there is another clumsy band that keeps you guessing about the locker room theory. Is the hem meant to ride up randomly around her navel? That mean little skirt clings to her non-existent hips and adds no grace to her workaday physicality.


OK , Ok, this is where I am conflicted. I would really like my tennis players to look like this




or this



but we have moved on from cotton piqué and frilly knickers. The game is far more athletic , the women are more powerful and if you're making like a battering ram on the baseline, you want to look as well as sound as if you mean business. I can't fault that argument. But what is it about the rotten little skirts? I can only conclude it's that they rarely show your underwear. But dear oh dear, look at these...



What an absolute dog's dinner once again






These women have given up on looking very sweet or very chic like this..

(but don't get me started on the pearls..)


so why don't they wear shorts and be done with it? I love shorts. Martina Navratilova looked fabulous in them



and she tucked her shirt in. So this is a plea: shorts and a shirt tucked in or a tennis dress that
moves with the body and doesn't part in the middle. I may sound like my mother or the gym mistress but frankly I don't give a damn.




Teddy Tinling was acknowledged to be numero uno in the tennis dress game during the halcyon days of gracious Wimbledon. But hard to imagine that anyone ever took him seriously.






Besides her searing tennis today, Serena William's looked fabulous. Her dress was supportive, it was modest, it had cheeky detailing at the back, it flicked and billowed with her movement and above all it proudly showed her BigWhitePants. No wonder she beat poor old Azarenka 6-2, 6-3. She was at the top of her game. Look good and you do good is what my mother used to say.







Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert prepare to slug it out at Wimbledon in 1978 in this video It 's worth watching for a snatch of Dan Maskell's commentary, Evert's lovely dress and lacey underpinnings, wooden racquets, the endangered serve-and-volley and Martina's colourful brilliance that led her to victory.





Thanks to The Guardian online, LIFE and The Daily Mail Online

Advanced Platecraft

The Ultimate Dog's Breakfast featured at http://sharefood.ning.com


One spin off from the current economic problems might just be that certain Michelin-starry-eyed restaurants start serving food that satisfies the appetites of their customers rather than the vanity of their chefs. I am not against food that is carefully sourced and exquisitely cooked; nor even do I condemn the absurdist kitchen that serves confit of scorpion and Swarfega flavoured icecream. What drives me to pick up a Sabatier knife and wave it at a telly programme like Masterchef is the fetishisation of what used to be known as ‘plating up’ but what I suppose we should now call ‘presentation’ with a French accent.

Nobody wants a bowl of bread and butter pudding drowning in custard to the rim as a certain London gentleman’s club served me up one lunchtime. I agree food should be appealingly presented but the more that chefs try to out-garnish each other, the more naff and preposterous it becomes. I laughed over the pancake twizzles that one Masterchef contestant wrestled with, wasting in my opinion valuable galley time spent cooking real food to fill real stomachs.

I guess my primary bete noir is plate painting. The art of Advanced Platecraft is surely overrated and even primary school kids could master the mechanics of it with a teaspoon, a cookie cutter and some poster paint. It was the final of Masterchef where the talented amateurs were thrown into selected continental Michelin starred restaurants and beasted with this form of twiddling. The programme producers focused on the jeopardy of one young hopeful stamping some labour-intensive gloop in circles all over the plates. (Ikea eat your heart out) Then more sleight of hand with half a teaspoonful of red stuff and sighs of relief that he hadn’t cocked it up. Nobody filmed the hapless diner who had to make the choice between being polite and licking his plate.

The point is that the fabled sauce is often advertised on the menu and one has a reasonable expectation of eating it. I once chose a hot chocolate pudding for its caramel sauce at a Conran restaurant. I did not expect the caramel to reside in a series of polka dots alongside. (On that same occasion the blini to partner my smoked salmon was 4 cm in diameter, except that it was boat shaped so I’ve over-estimated its size. The potatoes were three medallions that would fit in a slot machine, and the wilted leeks a half a mouthful. I wrote and complained that they had a 'cavalier attitude' towards vegetables but they didn't care.) Call me old fashioned.

Does anybody else want to call for this posturing to stop? I don’t wish redundancies on any restaurant, but too many chefs can wreck a square meal. Cut out the fiddling whilst the diners starve and I for one will feel satisfied.

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