Will Celebrity Stylists Go Extinct?
From The New York Observer:
Blake Lively, the tall, shapely, 21-year-old actress, wore a white, backless Roberto Cavalli dress to the opening of the Swarovski Crystallized store last week; a neon-pink strapless Michael Kors dress to the CFDA awards; and a fitted turtleneck dress to the Ralph Lauren show in February. These, everyone agreed, were good choices.
Her baby-blue, low-cut romper at the CW upfronts in May; the backless, one-sleeve, high-slit teal Versace number at the Met Costume gala; and the unflattering, eggplant Burberry Prorsum dress at the New Yorkers for Children benefit were not so well received.
Ms. Lively does not employ a stylist. Or so she says, anyway.
“She’s the one that looked like a mess in that Nina Ricci dress at the Golden Globes!” sniped celebrity stylist Phillip Bloch, who has worked with Halle Berry and Salma Hayek. “This is why you need a stylist. If you go to a designer, their goal is to get you out the door and on the red carpet in their gown come hell or high water. They’re never going to say, ‘This just might not be right for you.’”
And yet, Ms. Lively and other actresses, including her Gossip Girl co-star Taylor Momsen, Chloë Sevigny, MTV newbie Alexa Chung, and, sometimes, Kirsten Dunst, Natalie Portman, Tilda Swinton and Sarah Jessica Parker, are increasingly going directly to designers, visiting showrooms and runway shows, borrowing clothes and thereby cutting out the people who used to broker such deals.
Perhaps this has something to do with stylists like Mr. Bloch, the name-dropping Rachel Zoe, and TLC’s Stacey London, who once worked with Kate Winslet and Liv Tyler, becoming themselves the stars of shows about their industry—at times gaining more publicity than their clients—and, in a sense, destroying the mystery of how the stars’ looks were constructed.
Personal stylists are an easy line item to cut in the dwindling budgets of movie studios and major networks. (’Member when Ms. Johansson reportedly missed the Cannes premiere of Vicky Cristina Barcelona after the studio wouldn’t pay for her $4,000-a-day makeup artist?) “Ellen Pompeo and I had lunch a couple of weeks ago,” said Mr. Bloch. “And she said ABC gave her $500 for hair, makeup and stylist to go on Letterman to promote the next season of Grey’s Anatomy—that ain’t gonna cut it!”
It’s true: some of these celebs simply cannot be trusted to dress themselves, although there are people like Chloë Sevigny and Sofia Coppola who have been successfully making a go of it for quite some time.
I personally find it pretty irksome when a stylist sends out one of their clients to the red carpet in some boring and safe ensemble that any slightly discerning friend could have selected, given the array of wardrobe options available to most celebrities.
Photo credit: Us Magazine
