Grammy's 2021: Getting dressed up or undressed?
my very much essential comment on this year's Grammy looks, and oh, the club too.
Hello everyone,
First of all, thank you so much for the overwhelmingly positive response to last week’s dispatch, it means a lot and I deeply appreciate it. Another week is over, which means another week closer to the end of lockdown, I guess. As announced in last week’s newsletter, in this dispatch I will give my non-essential comment on the Grammy looks- all I say now that we have everything from the club, over clueless to the forest, far away from all these hunters with cell phones.
Custom Versace times 3. Levitating. Goodbye to the pink gown. Hello to the blazer, revealing the legs. Don’t start now. Goodbye to the blazer. Hello to Dua Lipa in underwear.
Dua Lipa, who won a Grammy for the album “future nostalgia”, performed at this year’s Grammy awards undoubtedly one of the most iconic performances of her career.
Starting her medley performance off with “Levitating”, Dua Lipa stands powerful in the middle of the stage, wrapped in her custom pink Versace gown. To me, this look communicates what “future nostalgia” is about: female empowerment. Pink, a colour traditionally associated with Barbie and Paris Hilton rather than feminism may stand symbolically as the antithesis to the record’s message in this context. Fashion is a means of communication and in this case, it screams that you can be a feminist no matter what colour you wear.
But then it happens. She takes off the gown and undresses between her songs until she is left in a pink Versace two-piece, that looks like underwear. After watching Lipa’s performance and comparing it to her male counterparts like Harry Styles who also performed at the Grammy’s, I cannot help but constantly wonder whether we are only willing to listen to women when they take their clothes off on stage.
Dua Lipa’s performance looks were all handcrafted by Versace and styled by her stylist Lorenzo Posocco. The barbie pink shade in combination with the starry crystals stuck on it, reminds me, a.) of my old barbie’s actual clothes and b.) a new interpretation of every single Hannah Montana look that included pink. Now, the revival of the 2000s is official. I tell you, everything that used to be seen as unfashionable, like Swarovski-Esque appliqued tops a la Paris Hilton, will be trendy this summer. The constant reinvention of fashion, from anti-fashion to trend. First, it was the 70s a few years ago, I am pretty certain Ganni did their best on brining a juxtaposition of the Victorian age and the 80s back with their infamous collars and puff sleeves, and now Y2K is leaving the charity shop and will officially go mainstream. What era will come next? With the incoming corset trend, it may be the renaissance of Dior’s “New Look” he created just after WW2, to which Chanel created the infamous black dress as an angry response. Let’s just hope that whoever wears corsets now give themselves the luxury of breathing. On that note, since by-gone eras seem to be constantly repeating themselves in the modern trend circle, I wonder how our current era will look in its reinterpreted version in like 20 years or so.
Watch Dua Lipa’s full grammy performance HERE
My final comment on that note is about Taylor Swifts look for her Folklore/Evermore performance- if you have been following her performances for some years, this was the first one where she did not wear a bodysuit as the only means of clothing or take any garments off. Maybe it’s finally hitting 30, maybe it’s finding your voice, maybe it’s the music labels or maybe it’s the magical effect of a woman in her 20’s. We will probably never know. Or maybe, they just holding a mirror to our society, artistically communicating that something in the perception of females has to change.
Watch Taylor Swifts full Grammy performance HERE
I am clearly going off-topic- let’s move on with the Grammy’s. The look the world has been waiting for. Never mind his performance, we are here for the fits. Harry Styles. Clueless. Yellow Check. A purple boa. One thing that is for certain is the fact, that boa’s had the most attention on the night of the Grammy’s. The tipping point is clearly reached now, thanks to Harry Styles’ stylist Harry Lambert- it will be hard to make a boa ever look so casually again, almost like a scarf to keep one’s cold neck warm in the freezing LA climate.
Giving my honest opinion on this outfit is like doing a very elaborate choreography on very thin ice, every moment the ice is about to crack, and I will say something terribly wrong- so on this comment, I will stick with the analysis.
Watch Harry Styles’ full performance HERE
First, Style’s outfit reminded me of the juxtaposition I wanted to create out of my personal (very expressive) style when I was in high school. I was obsessed with clueless and anything flamboyant, so if anyone ever asks me about my style evolution, I will simply show them this image. Obviously, Styles’ look is all Gucci. Obviously, all styled by Harry Lambert. Just like all his other looks that are now considered “iconic”. Recognise a pattern?
I do not know for sure, but it’s just a thought, but maybe we should rather give his stylist all the credit that Harry Styles usually gets showered with. In the end, it’s mostly a juxtaposition of Gucci and Lambert, in my opinion, one of the best visual demonstrations of “never change a running system”.
What message can we take out of this year’s Grammy’s then?
Matching masks may be the trend during the next Covid wave, we are in the 21st century and women apparently still need to take their clothes off in order to be heard, and we will all wear mad looks at out first social outings. And oh well, everyone misses getting dressed up and the club.
Just like Stella McCartney.
Watch the full Stella McCartney show HERE
Until we can meet in the club,
See you (virtually) in next weeks dispatch (which will hopefully rather PG than PG13)
Nina x