Nicole Kidman, pictured above, reportedly styled by fellow Australian director/fashionista/big-outrageous-man-dresser Baz Luhrmann, brought the old-school glamor to the Vogue runway on October 26, staged by the magazine (read: Anna Wintour) at Paramount Studios, to benefit the victims of the Los Angeles fires. The great and the good dutifully showed up to walk, play, and sit, iconically, as they do out there. Kidman seems elevated here. Her right hand is doing the airlift all by itself, apparently.
Pictured above in a fine Marie Antoinette gown, which then skips lightly over a few centuries by also quoting the can-can of the 1870s Folies Bergère and the Wild West, Julia Garner rushes with admirable determination down the Paramount soundstage entrance to her position on the runway. The proudly strutty models in retro-formal-wear flanking Garner her seem overpowered by the equipment trucks and golf carts backed into the joint, but that’s what soundstages do. They’re big and they have a lot of stuff in them. You have to overcome that to bring your show. We give the iron-willed Garner kudos for throwing that can-can move right on the march in.
Celebrity wattage — such as it is — it a strangely delicate element in the cosmos that we only wish world-renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking had had time to study before his untimely demise. We suspect a little time in Hollywood might have helped the acclaimed Cambridge professor with his work on black holes. Pictured above, Demi Lovato and Rita Ora scientifically demonstrate the immense valence — the powers of attraction between molecules — that beings possessing a measure of celebrity wattage can exercise in a social setting. The laws of physics demand that they be photographed together, in order to make more celebrity wattage than they would photographed separately.
A slight physics problem is presented by Lovato’s shoe. It’s not clear that the toe of the shoe would allow the actress to walk in a forward direction without having to lurch to the side with every step, so as to avoid falling because the toe won’t bend. Surely the shoemaker thought of that possibility? And built in a little flexibility down there in the armature leading to the little bulbous nose on the toe? Because, in a social setting, constantly having to move about in a controlled fall could get dicey.
Pictured above, California governor Gavin Newsom, who lent the state’s imprimatur to the Vogue World Hollywood announcement of the benefit to wildfire victims back in March, introduses his wife and daughter to Vogue’s Ann Wintour at the show. In the background, the endless front row, in director’s set chairs, stretches to infinity.