Monday 28 October 2013

Point of View: Best Dressed Lists

Primetime Emmy Awards 2013
Whenever we indulge in the delights of weekly gossip magazines, it’s always impossible to flick through without coming across the regular best-dressed lists features, which separate the fashionistas from the fashion victims. The lists showing some of the world’s best-loved celebrities who have been looking spectacular and have been dressing appallingly. But is it just a bit of innocent tongue in cheek fun or a form of playground bullying?


Eleanor Lambert
The concept of the best-dressed list was founded in 1940 by Eleanor Lambert, who was a renowned figure within the American fashion public relations industry. It was an attempt to improve the declining reputation of the American fashion industry at the time at the outset of World War II. Prior to her death in 2003 at the age of 100, she had left her International Best Dressed List to four of Vanity Fair’s editors.  The first lists were mostly wealthy society women who were famous for spending entire fortunes every year on haute couture, while movie stars were rarely named to it, as they were dressed by their studios. Now it features a multitude of celebrities - from the A-List to the Z-List.

Best dressed lists have since become a hugely prominent figure within the wonderful world of women’s media. There has also been a hit TV series based around that concept known as Fashion Police, featuring legendary comedienne Joan Rivers leading a panel of fashionistas which include reality star Kelly Osbourne, E! News anchor Giuliana Rancic and celebrity stylist George Kotsiopoulous. I personally find this very enjoyable, even though some of Joan Rivers’ punchlines remarks often leave me open-mouthed and create a shocked silence within the room.  Other times I am in complete hysterics and find it impossible to breathe due to my excessive laughter. But I see this purely as comedy and is by no means intended to be personal.

At the end of the day, celebrities are human beings and it would be an extremely unpleasant thing to live in a society where we are judged on what we are wearing. We are only human after all, and we always have a right to be wrong, whether its fashion or life in general.

The world of best-dressed lists is a very complex one indeed and a very difficult one to explain. I generally think it is built on hypocrisy and a bundle of contradictions. What might be a best-dressed candidate in one person’s opinion may be a worst-dressed candidate in another person’s opinion and vice versa. I believe that it all comes down to personal taste and opinion. We all see the world through our own eyes…

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