How Oscar Nominations Affect its Red Carpet Fashion

Analyzing data to determine how fashion at the event might suffer this year.

After the 2020 Oscar nominees were announced on Monday, The Academy received significant backlash against its releasing, once again, white and male-dominated picks. Among the ‘snubbed’ were Jennifer Lopez for her role in Hustlers, Greta Gerwig for her direction of Little Women, Beyoncé for her original song, Spirit, and Lupita Nyong’o for her performance in Us.

Red carpets in Hollywood have recently acted as a significant opportunity for celebrities and fashion designers alike to both receive recognition & raise powerful statements. In fact, in 2019, Oscar-attending celebrities decided to boycott Dolce & Gabbana by refusing to wear the designer at the event, due to Stefano Gabbana’s recent racist, sexist, & homophobic remarks. In 2018, female Golden Globes-attendees decided to dress in all-black — a protest against Hollywood’s recent sexual assault scandals and a symbol of the rising #MeToo movement. Thus, the Hollywood red carpet has become a tool for celebrities to take a stand & make a statement.

The immediate effects of neglecting the talents of women & women of color can be seen in the form of angry press articles and Twitter threads. What do The Academy’s choices, however, mean for the Oscars’ most anticipated, press-generating segment of the evening: its red carpet?

Men — save for Billy Porter showing up in a Siriano gown last year — have predominantly shown up at the Academy Awards in suits. In fact, Vogue is basically begging for men to adopt more “boundary pushing” outfits at this year’s awards, à la Timothée Chalamet and Harry Styles. Whether a suit is made by Saint-Laurent or Hugo Boss, can the common Oscars-viewer really tell? Do they — no offense — care?

In short, no they don’t. It is predominately women who generate red-carpet hype and press, and we’ve got data to back this up.

Let’s take a look at the 2017 Oscars, famous for when LaLa Land won and then lost Best Picture. That year, Emma Stone & Casey Affleck took home the awards for Best Actress and Best Actor, respectively. When I look at Google Search data from that day — February 27th, 2017 — Affleck was searched-for, on average, 2% more than Stone. This might not be statistically significant, but yeah, the people were more interested in Casey.

However, when I look at search queries that same evening for “Emma Stone red carpet” and “Casey Affleck red carpet”, Stone’s style was inquired for 69% more than Affleck’s. So, Emma Stone knocked it out of the park with regards to people caring about what the two were wearing, and overall generated more online search traffic for the event.

Though, any post highlighting the public’s monumental interest in women’s red carpet attire would be unjust if it didn’t touch on the sexism that often causes such intrigue in the first place.

In fact, women are so famously asked about & scrutinized for their red-carpet attire that Hollywood’s biggest actresses launched an entire campaign to encourage reporters to, well, ask about more than their dresses. The #AskHerMore campaign, launched just in time for the 2014 awards, highlighted women in Hollywood’s desire to be seen as people beyond solely what they were wearing.

So, this Stone versus Affleck data might have been propelled by sexist fundamentals that a women’s outfit at an awards event is more newsworthy than her accomplishments for being there. However, women in Hollywood do possess a long-standing history of collaborating closely with fashion’s biggest designers, suggesting that their red-carpet picks might actually be — at least in the world of high-fashion — justifiably buzz worthy.

Take Audrey Hepburn with Hubert de Givenchy as an example, nicknamed “the original brand ambassadors”. As Givenchy’s muse, Hepburn almost exclusively wore Givenchy on-screen, and is credited as a major catalyst for the designer’s career & success in the United States. Hepburn’s appearances in Givenchy generated press for how her looks not only promoted a new, up-and-coming designer, but simultaneously introduced a new kind of fashion, inspiring new necklines, sleeves, and black dresses for women. In fact, the dark Givenchy gown worn by Hepburn in the opening scene of Breakfast at Tiffany’s inspired the styles worn by stars for the Time’s Up protest at the 2018 Golden Globes.

Hepburn and Givenchy seventy years ago is mirrored by Jennifer Lopez and Versace today. I’ve previously written about Lopez’s significant contribution to red-carpet-press, with her internet-breaking appearance in a Versace piece nearly twenty years ago. Currently the face of Versace’s new campaign and having recently closed the brand’s Spring/Summer 2020 runway show, Lopez clearly possesses a strong relationship with the fashion house & its creative director, Donatella Versace.

How much, however, does JLo’s name help the Versace brand? Data tells us: a lot.

When I look at Google Search data from the past twelve months, 60% of the related queries to “Versace” are simultaneously searching for Jennifer Lopez. Additionally, the top related search topic to “Versace” is for JLo’s famous ‘Green Dress’, having recently risen in popularity by 250%. In short, the majority of the time people are searching for Versace, they’re also searching for JLo.

If Lopez weren’t to attend the Oscars, could we be missing out on a new, groundbreaking Versace piece? Or, with JLo so obviously ‘snubbed’, could Donatella protest designing fashion for the event entirely? Versace aside, will a lack of JLo mean we’ll be missing a new groundbreaking, innovative, high-fashion design?

The list of Hollywood women’s influence in & connection to the fashion industry goes on and on. Beyoncé— also ‘snubbed’ this year — is never one to miss on the red carpet. Some of Beyoncé’s most famous looks come from Givenchy, whom she’s worn to the Met gala five years in a row, and Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing, who designed her entire Coachella wardrobe in 2018.

Her Coachella collection, specifically, demonstrates Balmain’s excellence in fashion design & Rousteing’s expertise in developing couture for a crew of 200 moving, dancing models. Rousteing even claimed one of Beyonce’s main looks to be a “timeless” piece of “couture” that “everybody will remember in thirty years”. So, a designer’s collaboration with a powerful, influential woman in media resulted in a new, custom-made couture collection which stunned audiences worldwide.

Finally, let’s not forget about Lupita Nyong’o. Defined by Harper’s Bazaar as a “red carpet standout”, the internet is still talking about that blue Prada gown she wore to her very first Academy Awards ceremony in 2014.

Some of the world’s biggest brands —including those founded by male designers — are built upon the mission to empower women and make them feel beautiful. (In fact, Dior’s latest Spring 2020 Haute Couture collection was inspired by the proposition, “if women ruled the world”). These designers & their high-fashion houses stand by women and women of color on their runways and in their campaigns. White-washing or male-dominating the Oscars will not only harm the publicity major fashion brands could be receiving, but will also inevitably result in a red carpet lacking the creative genius fashion sees when it channels the diversity & uniqueness of the stars these brands adore.

I’m a computer science student at Harvard studying the intersection between fashion and technology. Or, in this article’s case, what data can tell us about the high-fashion industry.

You can read more of my fashion-tech articles on Dashion: where data meets fashion.