The 75th Golden Globes was held on Sunday, January 7.
We all know this by now because our news feed have been veiled by the black camouflage of the celebrity attendees.
Alison Brie, shot by Kevork Djansezian via Getty Images
Everyone was flushed in black.
Political or fashionable, choosing colour to make a statement has been part of fashion since purple was declared a regal colour in the Sumptuary Laws from Elizabethan times. This year at the Golden Globes in the United States, black was dubbed the shade of solidarity for injustices of harassment in the entertainment industry. Particularly exposed in 2017, we the public saw many notable males fall from their marks for numerous assault convictions.
At the ceremony last Sunday, the angst amongst the sea of celebrities was at an all time high at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Almost everyone with a lapel was wearing a rectangular pin with “Time’s Up” enamelled on the face, and the women present at the awards drowned themselves in a black shade of solidarity amongst the round tables dressed in Lindt chocolates and champagne.
Daniel Kaluuya. Photo by Frazer Harrison via Getty Image
So, why black?
In fashion we wear black almost every day so that we focus on the clothes we are making. At the Golden Globes, Susan Sarandon wore black because she is cooler than all of us anyhow, and Nicole Kidman wore black to represent her chic role in the powerful show Big Little Lies. Oprah wore it so we would focus not on her, but hear her message of absolute truth.
Women share social experiences that are related if not identical and more vibrantly scarring, to those presented to the press, especially over this past year in 2017. Neither created nor destroyed, the black dress code of solidarity last Sunday is also a social diversion from the future.
Mariah Carey, America Ferrera, Natalie Portman, Emma Stone and Billie Jean King
75th Annual Golden Globe Awards, Los Angeles. Photo by Rob Latour/REX/Shutterstock
Overwhelmed with exponential progression in technology, global lifestyle and interconnectedness, cultures everywhere reflect a timid withdrawal from too much. Curled into more colour, more sequin, or more glitter, fashion is moving in a wave of fastidious hemlines and intricately majestic colours, or lack thereof.
In sync with this idea of protection and coming together, the Handmaid’s Tale swept us awake last year to see that the 30 year old story foreshadowed our currently utopic state of non-existing privacy. Privately and publicly we brace ourselves for a New Dark Age as Hollywood gathered in all black.
Elizabeth Moss explains the challenges of giving the Handmaid’s Tale book justice on the screen. Image via Variety
Finally, fashion and society are joined in a push for now. Time is up for many injustices: gendered segregation, racial segregation, segregated pay – the list goes on. Time is up in the entertainment industry, and for unrecognized fashion workers, its producers, the design geniuses, stylists, sewers, creatives, pattern makers, and every department you didn’t know made your clothes. This year we recognize those who made our clothing so they can be respected as Hollywood demands respect, too.