Met Ball Fug-or-Fab Carpet: Kate Beckinsale

I will say this about Kate Beckinsale: Even if it’s not actually true, it feels like she shows up to everything — no matter what level of formality it is — in a strapless satin dress that’s usually accompanied by an elaborately Prom-esque updo, so I’m pleased she went more over-the-top for the Met Ball.

In some senses, I really like this, because I totally understand why a girl might want to wear a giant skirt and train to a huge event: Where else in your life can you do it? It’s not like you can wear it to the supermarket, or to yoga, or to pick up your kid at school — well, unless you want all the other parents to conspire to lock you in the trunk of a very small vehicle with shitty suspension and take you for a quick ride around town.

But I can’t decide how I feel about this PARTICULAR elaborately beskirted dress. The colors are interesting, but the top part does feel a bit like a lazily bedazzled tank, which is slowly being devoured by a sea creature from the treacherous deep. And it’s also unfortunately VERY challenging to wear a dress in this vein without being compared to the benchmark of giant-traindom, Penelope Cruz’s 2007 Versace from the Oscars:

I loved this. The bodice is more graceful, elaborate, and interesting, and the skirt seems more romantic than showy. So even though it might not be entirely fair to compare the two, in an era where this dress is going to get regurgitated on lots of all-time best-dressed-at-the-Oscars lists, it’s hard to forget it — ergo I can’t tell if I like Kate’s dress because it’s thematically evocative of this one, DISLIKE it because it’s thematically evocative but in an inferior way, like it because it’s legitimately pretty, or dislike it because the bodice part seems unimaginative. I am all over the place. If it weren’t already pretty much a given that I’m having Jif on a sandwich for lunch, I’d be very concerned that I’m about to go hungry for a few hours while I stare at my fridge and fruitlessly debate the merits of various Lean Pockets.