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At the Golden Globes, Guests Went Hard or Went WFH

Photo credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Getty Images

From Esquire

Cast your mind back to the last awards season. Things were different then. As Hollywood's haut monde descended upon the red carpet, the swelling tide of reassuringly mad menswear had ebbed. There were fewer counts of Neo-Monte Cristo (Nicholas Hoult in Dior), and shipster black tie beanies (Mahershala Ali in Ermenegildo Zegna). Instead, Very Famous Men flocked to the penguin suits of yore. Monochrome was back.

These were, and remain to be, conservative times. The Oscars, so self-important that they believe themselves to be a clear reflection of the wider world (because we're all millionaires with second homes in Malibu), dressed accordingly.

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And then 2020 happened, and the times became Unprecedented with a capital 'U'. The Golden Globes, oft-considered to be the Oscars' sillier wined-up cousin, began in earnest as awards season's warm-up act, and the effects of (whisper it) the pandemic were there for all the world to see. Because the guests once again dressed for the world in which we live, which, unsurprisingly, is mostly confined to our four walls.

No lockdown journey is the same, and all bases on the formal-to-give-absolutely-no-fucks spectrum were covered accordingly. Some guests had cabin fever. Some were at peace with lockdown. Some were itching for 4am parties. And some had even kicked back on the sofa after apparently inhaling six edibles and half a Xanax leftover from a trip to Bangkok. Celebrities: just like you and I!

The night's most memorable appearance came from Jason Sudeikis, and not just because his speech was like one long Cheech & Chong table read. While accepting best actor in a musical or comedy series (and seemingly not expecting it whatsoever), the Ted Lasso winner referenced Tolstoy and bedtime stories (???) in an eco-friendly tie-dye hoody from Forward Space, which describes itself as a place of "dynamic dance-based sweat sessions with athletic conditioning components". Translation: not very Golden Globes at all.

It wasn't the only version of trippy, either. While more polished, Schitt's Creek's Dan Levy melded several shades of mustard and canary yellow for a dressed down suit that, again, wasn't very awards season. Where past experimentation was so often buoyed by mad-normal combos (fluoro jacket, normal tie; draping jacket, slimline fit and so on), the 37-year-old eschewed the old rules entirely in a sequinned roll-neck and stacked lamé lace-ups.

Josh O'Connor went for a similar tack, but instead swapped Studio 54 lite for King Louis XIII of France by way of Loewe (a go-to for The Crown actor). There was a tuxedo jacket, sure, but the lapels were chevronned into origami-like shapes, and underneath sat a papery cravat that chimed with diamond white pooling trousers below. Even by 2019's left-field standards, this stuff is unusual. Jackson Lee went for a brocade, billowing kimono-like jacket. Leslie Odom Jr lined a pink suit with a lime green roll-neck. David Fincher waterboarded shots. The list of madness goes on.

Photo credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Getty Images

Of course, it can be argued that men are afforded such transgressions, and less scrutiny. The Hollywood Reporter's Rebecca Keegan was right to point out the yawning chasm of expectation from men and women in attendance on Twitter (illustrated by a ballgowned Amanda Seyfried side-by-side with a tie-dyed BK THC Dad in Sudeikis), casuality peppered the ceremony to little fanfare. Chloé Zhao, the recipient of the Globes' best director gong for her American odyssey in Nomadland (she's only the second ever woman to win the award, and the first Asian woman to do so) also eschewed the usual glambake, choosing to accept her prize in the stuff we all like when stuck behind a laptop screen. Which, in this instance, was an unassuming khaki top and a mug your mum opts for when she's feeling a bit poorly.

Elsewhere, Jodie Foster accepted the award for best supporting actress in The Mauritanian in PJs alongside her wife, who was also in PJs, and a dog called Ziggy that wore a matching necktie. Of course, not everyone was as casual as Sudeikis, Zhao and Foster, but their willingness to dress on their own terms set a new temperature for a stuffy showbiz world that's sullied by unnecessarily mean 'worst-dressed' lists and sidebars of shame.

The black tie state of mind wasn't totally unconscious. Unorthodox's Amit Rahav went for the most classic of the classics, and, admittedly, he looked great. Black tie generally does when done right. Carey Mulligan and The Crown's Emma Corrin were also but two guests to go for the sort of gownery that photographs very well in the hazy, smoky, offhand shots at a Vanity Fair afterparty. But they weren't the majority. While our ring of the tuxedo's death knell may've been premature back in 2019, two years on, dress codes, like everything else, are ablaze – and the old rulebook makes for a wonderful effigy.

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