Award Show Watch: Oscars 2010

This year was no exception fashion-wise, but hair and makeup-wise… hmmmm…. Whenever the fashion shows are really neutral as they were this past season, there’s a collective “uh-oh” throughout the makeup community because – contrary to popular belief – neutral is actually fairly difficult to do and to wear. Most women look better with color on their face. The Red Carpet for the Oscars was no exception. The one variance on the “neutral” rule for the fashion shows this past Fashion Week was the neutral face with the strong lip. The celebs whose artists did a version of that look faired much better on the “Step and Repeat” than their all-neutral counterparts. Another runway trend that is difficult to translate to real life is “tousled” hair. It’s a fine line between tousled and un-done. In all, with a lot of washed out faces and not entirely there hair, there were several people who had aspects of their look that were good, but very few who hit it from head to toe. Let’s talk about those who did hit the nail on the head…

Once again, Sandra Bullock – Different from her Golden Globe look, Ms. Bullock went all pale – including her gown – with a sharp pop of color on the lips, and beautifully coifed dark hair. By going with a vibrant, rather than a dark lip color and keeping everything else clean clean clean the look is fresh and chic instead of any kind of Goth. (and congrats to Sandra for her Oscar win!)

Queen Latifah – Queen Latifah has beautiful skin, face shape and bone structure so I’ve noticed that for events she and her team – wisely – just pull her hair back. This lets her gorgeous face be the star of the show. Instead of following any type of fashion-show inspired trend, her artist just did a classic beautiful face focusing on the eyes and keeping the rest of the face soft. And I love to see women of color wear blush because it picked up the (gorgeous) color of her gown and made her whole face glow.

Kate Winslet – Again… sometimes you just have to let the trends go. Kate was flawless from head to toe. Impeccable yet simple hair, fabulous skin with just enough blush to make her radiant, just enough intensity on the eyes without going overboard, and a nice slick of gloss in a rosey color. Simple, chic, elegant. Once Again Folks – Less is more…

Meryl Streep – As a “grand dame” in Hollywood (I think Ms. Streep is 60 now), it’s so essential to look age appropriate – i.e. don’t try to look too “young” – without looking matronly and needlessly “old”. Aside from the fact that she’s obviously taken very good care of herself and she looks amazing, style-wise Meryl’s look is proof that Classic Is Always The Right Answer. I like that she kept the hair a bit looser which is a “younger” look. Also, her artist managed to use an allover soft makeup color palette without having her look washed out, which was a real problem for a lot of people this year. The peach/pink palette really suits her skintone and, on the technical level, whoever did her makeup worked it out because it was impeccably applied.