I don’t watch the Oscars every year, but this year I was working late and I had the show running on another screen to keep me company. I thought overall it was a funny, uplifiting, and moving spectacle. I loved the tributes to movies with signifant anniversaries (Cabaret, The Godfather, Pulp Fiction, as well as a Bond, James Bond retrospective).

You’ve all heard enough about the slap. Chris Rock had tremendous, Swiss-finishing-school poise. I want to talk about my favorite part, which is the red carpet. Even if I don’t watch the event, I love scrolling through the NYT red carpet slideshow the day after.

And this year, I indulged my schadenfreude by reading the Daily Mail‘s Worst Dressed summation. I was looking for validation of my opinion about Tracee Ellis Ross’s boob-flapping nightmare. I’ll spare you the horror.

But I had to take exception to the headliner in their worst dressed article. Billie Eilish! Best dressed is more like it!

She won an Oscar for Best Original Song, for “No Time to Die,” together with her brother, Finneas. And when the duo took the stage at the Oscars, her performance was hauntingly exquisite—ranging from a nuanced delicate clarity to thrumming deep power. She has one of the great voices of the century. Finneas’s piano melody was equally haunting.

I absolutely loved her red carpet look. I thought the cascading voluminous black ruffles were stunning, with her face emerging like an exquisite cynical flower. Once the outer cape was stripped away, she revealed an equally elegant black satin pyjama suit, which she wore on stage with 6″ black patent leather platform boots. Goth, striking, strong-yet-sensuous, completely original. (BTW, Vogue agrees with me!)

Boo to the naysayers at the Daily Mail, who obviously don’t understand the temendous impact Billie has had on young women by refusing to conform to the outdated beauty standards of yesteryear. She chooses how to present herself to suit herself, with the full range of possibilities afforded by a genius’s imagination. She is leading the way into the future, though the dinosaurs at the Daily Mail don’t know it.

I also loved Diane Warren’s green satin tuxedo suit and fantastic gem-colored boom box bag. Diane was nominated in the same category, Best Original Song, for “Somehow You Do.” She collaborated with Reba McEntire for this song for the film Four Good Days. Reba gave her usual pulling-on-the-heartstrings performance at the Oscars.

The Daily Mail doesn’t know from handbags, as they put Diane on the worst-dressed list because of it. This clutch was a supercool celebration of music by a woman who is at the top of her field in a male-dominated arena (according to Rolling Stone in 2021, “Though the latest slate of Grammy nominees marks a high point for female artists, songwriters, and producers, the 2013-2021 average still sits at 13.4% women versus 86.6% men”). The boombox symbolizes her passion for music, as well as being cool in its own right.

This was Diane’s 13th nomination. Rock on! Fingers crossed for next year.

While the DM was right on the money with most of their parade of tackiness, they missed the mark with Billie and Diane. IMHO.

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