YOUTH may be wasted on the young, but designer dresses sure as hell aren’t, if Sunday night’s Bafta awards are anything to go by.
With an average red carpet age of about 22, it looked more like a Hollyoaks leaving do than the UK’s most prestigious film awards. That said, it was one of the funkiest fashion wise.
Granted the A-lister quotient was on the low side. Where was Angelina Jolie? Where was George Clooney? But who cares about Hollywood royalty when you have got the real deal with the second in line to the throne himself giving out a gong?
Anyway, back to the frocks. And on the whole they were really pretty impressive.
With the young actresses dressing about as far from the over-the-top taffeta and trains of the Golden Globes and the upcoming Oscars, they showed it is possible to look super-glamorous and hip at the same time.
Where, Stateside, the likes of 17-year-old Miley Cyrus and 20-year-old Taylor Swift rock up to award ceremonies looking twice their age, our homegrown talent came over all fashion forward.
Former Atonement colleagues Romola Garai and Saoirse Ronan kept it short and sweet. Romola wore a graphic print cocktail dress by hip London designer Erdem, while Lovely Bones star Saoirse looked cute enough in Burberry Prorsum to prompt a flurry of speculation that she could be the next face of the brand, following in Emma Watson’s magical footsteps.
A star is shorn in woman of the moment Carey Mulligan.
I wasn’t crazy about her dress – if only it had stopped at the knee – but not since Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby has an actress worked a crop so well.
As was expected, there were a handful of Alexander McQueen tributes on the red carpet, among them Sam Taylor-Wood, who accessorised her black lace gown with her 19-year-old arm candy – I mean fiance – Aaron Johnson.
It wasn’t only the teenagers getting it all right on the night. Kate Winslet looked sexy for once casting aside her usual structured gowns and chignons for a fluid number by Stella McCartney and tumbling curls while Vanessa Redgrave, at 73, was an education in effortless elegance.
It wasn’t all perfect, though.
Olivia Williams sack your stylist, everyone knows that mesh panels and sequins only belong on Dancing on Ice and Cher and Kimberley Walsh should have stepped far far away from the fake tan and marabou.
Note to Twilight star Kristen Stewart – when you are receiving an acting award AND wearing to die-for-Chanel, the least you can do is stand up straight and look happy to be there.
Oh, and who keeps inviting Radio One presenter Edith Bowman to these big film events? She was a shoe-in for a worst supported gong in her maxidress, but I like to think she just got lost on the way home from the Brits.
Patriotic as I like to be, I have to confess my look of the night did not come from one of our own, but from French starlet Audrey Tatou, left, who stopped traffic in her frou frou pink taffeta minidress.
Although what Karl Lagerfeld made of the face of Chanel choosing to wear Lanvin, for one of the biggest nights in fashion, is anyone’s guess.
