The phrase “formal attire” must mean different things in different social circles, and those of us who are not in the know often wonder why people wear what they wear for special events. For instance, why do Hollywood stars attending the Oscars go for high priced fashions with low plunging necklines? And I’m not just talking the women here.
Or why do the Grammy Awards feature even more skin, as if skin equates to formal attire when it could be formal unattire? I hate to think what a couple pieces of strategically placed chiffon costs in that world.
A couple nights ago I watched the Country Music Awards and was struck, not by the amount of plunging necklines or skimpy wardrobes (although the number Trace Adkins performed certainly had its share of the latter), but by the amazing amount of people who wore jeans as if they were a coat-and-tails. Gretchen Wilson, Kenny Chesney, Rascal Flatts, you name the singer. Jeans were the formal attire of the evening.
I wondered about this. After all, country music is supposedly down-home, grass-root, feel-good. It’s the music hard scrapple people love, and maybe the jean scene is a rebuttal to spending all kinds of money for an evening’s worth of announcements. At first, I was taken back by the casualness, but as the evening progressed I liked it. The focus was on the music and not on the haute couture.
That’s another thing about the annual CMA show. The performers actually perform their songs, instead of just standing at a podium and reading a list of names. Fewer awards are given in the same time span that Hollywood presents two “famous” stars to present the list of the other “famous” stars who are up for nomination. There’s something down-home about that too.
Now if they could only do something about the acceptance speeches. Regardless of the attire, they’re uniformly uncreative. In fact, how many ways can you spell a-w-f-u-l?
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