The SAG Awards couture: Lumpy, Dumpy, Frumpy, and Tawdry

When it comes to clothes, I settled into my color palette in junior high school.  My favorite color is black; my next favorite is gray.  This is not because I’m a depressed person or into Goth.  It’s because I have absolutely no ability to match colors.

That’s where black and gray come in:  everything goes with them (except brown).  If I put on a black pair of pants, I can pair it with any color top I like.  This is a good thing because my approach to buying tops is as primitive as my color sense:  if I find a top in a fabric I like, in a design that doesn’t make me look plump, I tend to buy it in every color available.

I then wear those five or seven tops for years, right up until they disintegrate.  Once they’re gone, I hunt for another top that I like and buy out all the colors.  I’m not fashionable, but I always look neat, and my colored shirts always match those black or gray trousers.

Which brings me to the Screen Actors Guild (or SAG) awards for 2013.  The Daily Mail has a photo essay showing that the color du jour is black, with a fair amount of white thrown in.  Seeing the headline about black’s triumphant return to the fashion world, I expected to swoon over the various dresses and to wish that I too could have one. Oh, how wrong I was.  The color is good but the styles are awful, just awful.

Julianne Moore SAG Awards 2013

Julianne Moore may well be the worst.  She wore a white dress with abstract, almost 60s-style flowers embroidered around the bottom.  This would be okay but for the fact that the dress has a plunging decolletage that gives a frightening view of her flabby breasts.  Ignore the breasts, and she has no shape at all.  I guess that, when Moore received the invitation to the “SAG” Awards, she took that SAG part literally.

Nava Rivera SAG Awards 2013

Another peculiar costume in the breast department was Nava Rivera’s black dress.  It featured a peek-a-boo cutout (complete with chiffon overlay), that revealed the left half of her right breast, and the right half of her left breast.  She didn’t look voluptuous, she merely looked confused:  Am I selling my acting chops or did I leave the Victoria’s Secret store without putting my street clothes back on?

Jane Lynch, who proudly waves her lesbian sexuality around every chance she gets, opted for a black dress with a pleasantly classic line, except for the leather bondage theme.  Apparently she confused the SAG awards with the Folsom Street Fair.

Anne Hathaway SAG awards 2013

Anne Hathaway, who is a lovely and charming actress, looked like a Barbie doll run amok.  When I was little, I used to layer my Barbie’s clothes:  deep cut this over chiffon that, with a long overskirt complimenting a ridiculously short miniskirt.  I could have dressed Hathaway for pennies on the dollars she spent on her mix-and-match outfit, which included a long skirt, a short skirt, solid fabrics, sheer fabrics, and beaded fabrics.  I get dizzy just writing about it.

The other dresses I saw in the photo essay weren’t bad, but none were beautiful.  They all bespoke too much money, and too little taste.  Collectively,  all of these attractive, wealthy women looked like four of the seven dwarfs:  Lumpy, Dumpy, Frumpy, and Tawdry.

There are years when I look at these Hollywood costume photo essays and wish that, just for one night, I could live the glam life solely to wear a beautiful dress.  Looking at the women from this year’s SAG awards, though, I have to say I’m a lot better off with my current outfit:  black, straight-leg NYDJ jeans and a deep turquoise, round-necked, long-sleeved tee from Target.  Total cost (including the sale price on the jeans): $95.  I look classy, sleek, and comfortable.  Yay, me!