What do Timothee Chalamet and Kristen Stewart have in common, besides delicate bone structure and a mildly haunted vibe? Both arrived shirtless at the 2022 Oscars.
Okay, Stewart technically wore a shirt—it’s just that it is had one button, at roughly the level of her navel, more symbolic than functional. And in what is either a reference to Princess Diana’s bike shorts or further evidence that Kirsten Stewart answers to no one, she covered the bottom half of her body in scarcely a few centimeters of fabric. Shorts. Kirsten Stewart wore shorts to the Oscars. Shorts and what I can only describe as a diamond encrusted bolo tie. You can love it, you can hate it, you can wonder if the metal strip running the length of her torso is uncomfortably chilly, but you have to respect the boldness of this choice.
Chalamet can commiserate—he donned a sequined tuxedo jacket and neglected to layer a shirt underneath, choosing instead to layer multiple silver necklaces. In short, this is an outfit I tried to create many times at Wet Seal in the late 2000s, but not with as much luck as Timmy. Wherever Harry Styles is tonight, he’s calling his stylist and asking if he can show up at the Grammys without pants, promise.
Two other celebs who were matchy-matchy in the same “I escaped the nudist colony just in time to get to the Dolby Theater” way were singer Halle Bailey and actor Emilia Jones, nominated for CODA. Both women wore dresses with a dramatic asymmetrical cutout on the torso, though Jones’s style built on the scandalousness with a skin-colored fabric, while Bailey’s added an extreme high slit on one leg.
Zendaya, while far from naked, went with another unorthodox Oscars style choice, though not quite so bold as Stewart’s short shorts—a crop top.
With the elegance to shame any dress code-obsessed high school principal, Zendaya showed that a crop top can be formal with an ivory-colored Oxford-style top and a sequined column skirt that flowed out into a train, from Valentino. Lily James wore, essentially, extended lingerie.
Beyoncé performed in about one-third of a dress, sporting a sparkling diamond garter on her fully exposed leg. And Megan Thee Stallion, wearing slate blue Gurav Gupta, once again demonstrated that “Vegas Showgirl Wins the $100 Million Jackpot” is a very very good aesthetic.
And let’s be clear: Good for all of them! Let the celebrities get a little crazy for their big annual movie party. They plan for months to let us watch them play dress-up. If they want to get a little bit naked, and the air conditioning isn’t too high, well, we will not complain. If we did, it would be to say: Men could serve to step it up a little bit in the revealing-clothes category. Timothee Chalamet cannot carry the weight of the world’s desire on his narrow shoulders. He doesn’t have that kind of bone density.
Oscars style is notable for a history of stately and striking eveningwear, occasionally punctuated by something outrageously and delightfully revealing: Rhink Cher’s Moonstruck year dress and Angelina Jolie’s “leg dress.” These little treats have been too few and far between. At the 2022 Oscars, the younger celebrities are making it clear: If you’re wearing more clothing than the Oscar statuette himself, you might be overdressed.
