Highlights of the Screen Actors Guild ceremony

Highlights of the Screen Actors Guild ceremony

It happens to all of us, but as Jennifer Lawrence found to her cost at the Screen Actors Guild only celebrities have a camera pointing at them when their wardrobes malfunction. The award for best wardrobe malfunction goes to… Jennifer Lawrence, the 22-year-old star of Silver Linings Playbook, whose flowing gown appeared to turn into little more than a basque as she stepped up on stage to receive her award for Best Actress at the Screen Actors Guild ceremony on Sunday night.

Marion Cotillard gasped. Nicole Kidman sneered, in much the way that a woman who hasn’t had a hit movie for years might when confronted with the sight of a younger model coming undone during her moment of glory. “Aha. Ha. HA,” her suspiciously smooth face seemed to want to say.

Sadly, video did not record the reaction of Robert De Niro, who was presenting the award. One imagines he was probably thinking something along the lines of “Wahey!”, as the bottom of Lawrence’s frock slipped further away from its top, revealing a good four inches of thigh.

Had someone – anyone? Nicole Kidman? – stomped on the back of it, causing it to tear? Had it become wedged under the considerable weight of Harvey Weinstein’s chair? In any case, Lawrence recovered her equanimity, managed to smooth the gown back down and went on to make a rather charming acceptance speech.

And Dior, who designed the couture dress and adapted it especially for the actress so that it included a swishy train (yes, I think that’s a fashion term), styled out the slip-up as only people working in fash-wan can. The mishap, was meant to happen, of course – it was all part of its design. “The dress is made with different levels of tulle and satin, and that is what the viewers saw when Jennifer lifted her dress slightly,” a spokesman said in a statement (because dresses require statements nowadays). “It was not ripped and there was no malfunction… it was the design of the gown.”

Durr, silly us with our cheap high-street clothes that are designed not to make us look naked!

But even if Lawrence did suffer a wardrobe malfunction – and look, clearly she did, because one minute she was covered up, and the next shazam! – would it really be that disastrous? We’ve all been there – I once walked through Granada city centre for a full 15 minutes before I realised that the reason men were staring at me was because my dress strap had broken, revealing a bra. Be it getting your skirt caught in your knickers or a button flying off a frock, the wardrobe malfunction is a great leveller.

It humanises the otherwise other-worldly celebrity and makes us like them more; it has become a staple of red carpets and awards ceremonies and gala dinners the western world over, the term becoming so commonplace that it actually entered the Chambers Dictionary in 2008.

Some people have even made careers out of wardrobe malfunctions. To wit: Madonna, Lady Gaga and Rihanna, who don’t own a sensible frock between them.

Many think that only the very tacky suffer wardrobe malfunctions – the Jordans and Christina Aguileras and “stars” of The Only Way Is Essex who clog up the “WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!” sections of gossip magazines – but that is simply not true. Wardrobe malfunctions befall the best of them. The Duchess of Cambridge almost did a Marilyn Monroe when a gust of wind lifted her Jenny Packham dress as she stepped off a plane in Canada in 2011. Then there was Janet Jackson, who “accidentally” revealed a nipple at the Super Bowl in 2004. Almost a decade on, it is still the thing she is most famous for.

J?K Rowling is not known for giving much away – other than her money – and yet in 2008 her agent was forced to protect her modesty with his hand, when her purple frock appeared to slip down at the British Book Awards.

Emma Watson seems to make a habit of wardrobe mishaps, baring more than she had hoped at the premieres of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. And some fashion faux-pas become so famous that they have their own Twitter accounts (@AngiesRightLeg – created after Angelina Jolie’s dress revealed rather too much of her thigh at last year’s Oscars – has 41,475 followers).

Men may not have to deal with tit tape and split dresses, but that’s not to say that they are immune. David Cameron managed to flash his bare chest to guests at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet last year, when his smart white shirt popped open during a speech. And Richard Madeley, whose wife Judy Finnigan famously flashed her bra at the 2000 National Television Awards, tells me that he has suffered his fair share of wardrobe setbacks.

“The trouser fly is, of course, the principal sartorial hazard for men,” he says. “I have walked into meetings with my bank manager ‘flying low’ (the code from one bloke to another that something is amiss), and I almost opened a British Book Awards ceremony unzipped.”

Indeed, Madeley believes that “if I were more of a gentleman it might have occurred to me to divert attention from Judy’s infamous wardrobe malfunction. While John Leslie was helping the lady back into her dress – surely the first time he had been known to do such a thing – I should have briefly turned my back on the gaping audience, discreetly unzipped my flies (perhaps tugging the tail of my dress shirt out to emphasise the effect), and turned back around to draw some of the flak from my wife. After all, there’s nothing funnier than a bloke in a penguin suit with his flies open.”

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Posted by Fahad Zafar on Jan 30 2013. Filed under Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.