The costume design extravaganza, staged by the acclaimed photographer Matthew Rolston and executive produced by musician Quincy Jones, was set to open the 68th Academy Awards, but all of the show’s participating models had already been promised that they could walk the pre-show red carpet, too.
“In 1953, they started televising the Oscars,” explains Elizabeth Castaldo Lundén, author of Fashion on the Red Carpet: A History of the Oscars, Fashion and Globalisation.
But when she was called for help by her good friend June Guterman, who’d been hired to associate produce that year’s Oscar fashion show, Rayner reluctantly volunteered her services.
For years the Best Costume Design Oscar was presented via an elaborate spectacle that involved supermodels, dancers and – on one occasion – a live elephant carrying an envelope with the winner’s name in their trunk.
Major lay-offs had hit Hollywood in the Forties, and the decision to call the incredibly valuable work of costume designers “fashion” seemed to imply that their work was slightly needless – as if this was mere wardrobe that could be bought off the rack.
