Let's play "Ailsa thinks she is a better designer than Valentino"*.
Here is Emma Stone. I kind of love her and think she is like super cool and hilarious and I want to be her bestie. She is wearing a dress from Valentino. It kind of makes my teeth hurt.
Now, I don't think she looks BAD here at all (although she does look surprisingly like Rachel McAdams, another cool-seeming beauty who should just accept that blonde isn't her colour). The main problem is that the dress is SO focus pulling. She probably looks like Rachel McAdams here because nobody even glanced at her face because they were so distracted by the dress. Especially on a red carpet, (and man is she lucky that this one wasn't actually red, because HOLY CLASH, BATMAN), no one wants to have their outfit drag everyone's attention away from their face. Probably no one made eye contact with her all night. (I'm kidding, of course. In person this probably wasn't that much of a problem, especially if she's as radiant in the flesh as I like to imagine she is. But in photos, which is what she's dressing for, what the eye is drawn to is nothing more than that seam across her tummy and the big blob of candy pink.)
So, again, this doesn't really look bad. It's just that I think this could look a lot better. How? I'm glad you asked.
1. Get rid of those horrible sleeves. I almost always think fancy dresses look nicer with no sleeves, or at least elbow or three quarter length ones, and these are way too puffy. She looks like she has candy floss arms. I think the sheerness is a cute touch that I'd probably like in any other colour, but this Barbie pink can't support more cuteness. She isn't going to a 7 year old's birthday party (she's actually going to
ELLE’s 19th Annual Women In Hollywood Celebration in Beverly Hills. Of course.) Take off the sleeves and this becomes instantly more elegant.
2. Break up the pinkness more. She's got the right idea with the black clutch, and those shoes which are an absolutely perfect spot on stroke of genius, and also gorgeous. But it's not quite enough. I'd say she also needs a slim black waist belt, perhaps in patent leather, and a touch of black at the throat as well. I like the idea of a black cameo brooch at the collar, which would really help counteract the effect of the dress pulling all the attention away from her face by drawing the eye back up there. I like the earrings, but they aren't really doing any work for her in this look.
3. Better hair. Her make up is pretty much perfect, but it's very low key (as it needs to be with this dress), so she needed more impact in her hair to help draw focus upwards to her face. As it is, her head is practically invisible. I attribute this mainly to the blonde, which I don't like on her at all since it totally washes her out, but she couldn't really have had the red and worn such a pink dress, so okay. They were right to go with a relaxed updo, but not THIS relaxed updo. I don't like that giant fringe on such a delicate face, and those flappy bits by her ears are sad. Something much more clean and grown up was called for here.
So, to the right is my (pretty terrible) impression of how this could have looked really elegant and classy. It was so nearly a perfect, cute, fun little look but they let that pinkness overwhelm everything.
Alas!
Of course, though, if she'd dyed her hair back to that glorious red and worn this in maybe a navy blue or deep green with a sprinkle of yellow gold jewellery, I'd probably have died of happiness. MISSED OPPORTUNITIES, GUYS.
*
Disclaimer: Yes, I know that the designers at Valentino now are Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli. OBVIOUSLY. But that doesn't sound nearly so snappy.
