Dolls Eye View: Golden Globes 2025

 

As usual, I anxiously await the first red carpet year of the year.....The Golden Globe Awards. This year, the women were more tastefully dressed than the usual barely there frocks and in your face costumes. But the pendulum seemed to have swung very far into the range of minimalism. Understand, I have nothing against simplicity. In fact, it can be a sort of "palette cleanser" after so many years of excess. However...with more simple styles comes the challenge to find a way to maintain a certain degree of glamour. And that is what this year's edition of GG red carpet trends is about.

Anna Sawai's 2-piece Dior sheath dress is certainly tasteful, but to my eyes, it doesn't command the room. Compare her to my girl Veronique. I chose an oyster white fabric instead of white (which looks a lot less "wedding dress). Veronique's dress is actually a two piece dress as well, but at the last minute, I added a circle to the front. That circle can be turned so that it falls on the diagonal, and thus conforms to the curve of the doll's body. It is tacked to the back of the bodice. I also added a stole...a simple piece of fabric over which I fashioned folds and drapes. 

In effect, I did something similar here. While respecting the simple silhouette of Kristen Bell's Ashi Studio's two-piece, lurex sheath dress, this time I decided to swap in a metal corset. I used aluminum from the neck of a champagne bottle and crushed it to fit over the Gina's curves. I used metal eyelets and a gold ribbon to hold it to her body in the back. For her skirt, I started out with a gold lurex skirt, but it looked a little cheap. So I decided gold satin would do more to elevate this look into something very couture! All by itself, the dress alone is quite interesting, but I felt Gina's arrival on the red carpet should have something tossed over her shoulders, like a great big silk striped shawl. It makes her look more like fashion and less like a golden statuette. 

Here's where my heart sank... After years of attending Yves Saint Laurent's catwalk shows while he was still alive....to see a dress worn by Zoe Kravitz with the famous couturier's name did not sit well with me. He would never have designed something so skimpy. It looks as if the designer ran out of material. So...for my girl Bella, we started out with the same black velvet strapless gown, but we invested in a more substantial white satin cummerbund and added a circle of white satin at the back instead of the wimpy train of the original dress. 

Now this dress I really liked and made not changes to the original design. Silk satin gliding over the body like a cool drink of water. It's Anya Taylor in vintage Dior. I definitely wanted this for my girl, Kym. But what a challenge! There is a post here on how to draft the cowl neckline, but it is using a stretch material and Kym's dress is not stretch which means it will not drape as beautifully. So even though I used the classic cowl neck pattern for this dress, the fact that it is 1/6 scale meant that there's not enough fabric for the fabric to hang so beautifully. I had to manually manipulate and tack down the folds and this was the best I could do! It's not at all like the Dior dress, but it does capture the essence. 

Nicole Kidman in Balenciaga is another dress I loved but found challenging to replicate on this scale. Again because1/6 scale does not a yield a lot of real estate to achieve the same effect. Still, I tried, with Christie as my model. I used a light silver lame stretch fabric for her dress but again, I had to do a lot of manipulation and tacking down to get something similar. I couldn't use the volume of fabric to get all of those beautiful folds in the original because of bulk. To make up for my efforts...I gave her a stole of silver "eyelash" fabric.

Sequins all by themselves aren't all that special. Though Mikey Madison is wearing a bronze sequined strapless sheath dress...truth is...you could copy it fairly easily with a length of stretch sequin fabric from the craft store! For Natasha's version, I started out with some very interesting fabric which has two sizes of sequins incorporated on a non-stretch base. To that I added irregular sequins I made from hot glue and sheets of matching foil. I placed them to cascade down the left side of the dress. Uneven sequins or various sizes of sequins mixed together in the same look is always more interesting than when they are predictably placed side by side. All by itself, it's quite beautiful. But this is the red carpet, so I made a classic straight coat out of a copper tone brocade to throw over her shoulders.

I almost did not make this St. Laurent dress worn by Ms. Saldana. It is again...another sequined dress... and it has a very popular neckline which normally I don't care for, nor is it easy for the doll to wear. But since I was working with sequins on a tulle base....which means I can break the rules in dolly dress construction, I decided to experiment. The dress my girl Lynn is wearing is really two-pieces. For the top, I used the foil from a bottle of wine to wrap around the body, serving as an understructure. I molded the shape to fit the doll's body, then cut the plunging neckline. I glued the sequined fabric to this metal base. Note: there was not enough foil to completely wrap around the doll which was okay because, I cut enough of the fabric to extend over the back and fasten with a hook & eye fastener. (I am going to experiment further to see if the understructure can be used with other fabrics.) The end result...the dress has that plunging neckline which holds up to the body without the need to tape the bodice to the doll!

This was kind of fun. Miley Cyrus in Celine. When making this for my girl, Emanuela, I thought the way to go was to cut out the pattern pieces then dip the edges in silver sparkles. That was so messy!!! So...I started all over, this time, sewing silver beads to the edges of the triangular pieces of the bodice. It is not the same scale and thus yielded a different look. But I still liked it a lot and left it alone. I also thought the opera length fingerless gloves elevated the look while maintaining a certain edginess.

I loved the texture of this dress worn by Ali Wong in Balenciaga. I didn't care for the bow at the waist no the black accessories (which I thought lent a Halloween aura to it). But I did love the ripped pieces aspect. So, my girl's Liu's dress began with a strapless sheath over which I added rows of ripped silk chiffon in flame red. I didn't cut the strips smaller because I didn't want Liu to end up resembling a rag doll AND...I felt the width of the slats was just the right scale to add an element of airiness to the overall look. For that reason, I also decided against the giving her gloves as well.

With this look, we get into a bit more volume. Sophia Vargara's dress is perfectly fine. We just thought the draping within the body of the dress, but especially within the skirt could be a little more interesting. And that's where we took liberties.

The ultimate fishtail dress....Michelle Yeoh in Balenciaga... I pretty much stuck to the lines of the original dress for my girl, Yoon. To a straight sheath, I added lots of triangles of silk at the point of the knees which adds movement as well as volume. Also, instead of a turtle neck, I chose a draped neckline suspended from a strap that ties in the back.

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