Oscars 2019

If there’s a time for best-dressed lists, it’s Oscar night.

The Oscars are the red carpet all red carpets wish they could be, the one where the world’s most prestigious actors present themselves in the way they’ll be remembered decades from now. Unlike, say, a wedding — which in Hollywood, who knows how that’ll turn out? — the Academy Awards has a pretty high likelihood of becoming the actual best night of attendees’ lives. And they dress like it.

At this year’s Oscars, stars like Gemma Chan, Angela Bassett, and Linda Cardellini have been praised for their pink, poofy gowns, while Best Actress nominees Glenn Close and Melissa McCarthy have perfected the art of the elegant cape. These, along with other trends, from gender-bending fashion to ’70s glam rock–inspired looks, have dominated the red carpet.

How we determine the “best” looks of the night, though, is a bit more complicated than simply trend-spotting. Best-dressed lists have a long history, but they’re less important than they used to be: As viewership for televised events like the Oscars (and the Super Bowl, for that matter) have declined, so too has the venerable institution of the best-dressed list. Sure, you can still find them pretty easily in newspapers like the LA Times, pop culture stalwarts like People and E!, or fashion websites like the Cut or Fashionista. But do they even matter anymore?

For tonight’s Oscars, we’re including the celebrities on the red carpet who are using their clothes in exciting ways (and whom, yes, people are talking about) while also explaining why they ended up here — and likely every other best-dressed list, too, all broken down into a few main trend categories.

The 2019 Oscars were another red carpet where stars played with gender norms

Once again, this year’s Oscars was a time for celebrities to play with gender fashion norms. Women wearing pantsuits on the red carpet is nothing new, of course, but it felt particularly fresh on Eighth Gradebreakout star Elsie Fisher. At just 15, she’s already established herself as an exciting character in fashion, having spent the past half-year on the promotion cycle wearing menswear-inspired sets that still scream, “I’m a teen, and I’m fun!” Stars like Amy Poehler and Awkwafina are also wearing menswear-inspired suits.

Billy Porter, star of the FX series Pose, which centers on the drag ball scene of the 1980s, has also made a name for himself as one of the men leading the way in feminine red-carpet attire. At the Golden Globes, he wore a bedazzled cape lined with hot pink fabric, though his Oscars look was somewhat more demure: a tuxedo gown and what appeared to be a hoop skirt, swathed in velvet.