BRIT Awards 2021: Best and worst dressed on the red carpet
The stars have descended on London for the 2021 Brit Awards – a few months late, but just as glamorous as usual. Dua Lipa led the way.
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Celebrities descended on London’s O2 Arena for Britain’s top annual music awards night, the BRIT Awards – three months later than usual, but no less glamorous.
The show took place before a live audience of 4000 people, who are not wearing masks or practising social distancing, as part of the United Kingdom’s gradual easing of coronavirus restrictions.
During the ceremony, Little Mix made BRITs history as the first girl group to win the coveted Best Group award, dedicating their win to all the girl groups who’ve come before them, including the Spice Girls and the Sugababes.
And Dua Lipa was another big winner, taking home the Best Female and Best Album awards.
But this story is about the red carpet, so let’s get to the best and worst dressed. Not that I have the faintest idea who falls into which category.
RELATED: The highlights from last year’s red carpet
First up, here is Dua Lipa, wearing a custom-made Vivienne Westwood minidress and some black tights. I gather that is a British punk fashion brand.
“I wanted to make it British, quite London, have some fun with it,” she told the red carpet live stream.
Is this dress “quite London”? That, I cannot say. What I can say is that it’s shiny.
Full disclosure: literally one celebrity in, we are swiftly entering “I don’t know who these people are” territory. My usual beat is politics, you see, but time zones have left me in the driver’s seat for this red carpet.
Haven’t felt this out of place since they made me recap The Bachelor.
Anyway Mabel, who is of course a singer of some variety, showed up rocking a lot of lime green, including some very, very long gloves.
Remember badminton? You probably played it in high school at some point. Remember the thing you hit with the racquet? It was a little ball, with a cone of webbing sticking out behind it for presumably aerodynamic purposes.
It’s called a shuttlecock, and Griff decided to wear one.
Harry Styles picked up a Brit for his single Watermelon Sugar dressed in a Gucci suit that wouldn’t look out of place as the wallpaper of the home of The Brady Bunch.
Taylor Swift wore a very sparkly Miu Miu midriff baring crop top and skirt before picking up one of the night’s key awards.
Google tells me Olivia Rodrigo starred in a show called High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, which is apparently the real name of a real series.
Here is her dress. It was green.
The awards are being hosted by comedian Jack Whitehall, whose father is very funny.
Jack went for a look we shall dub geek chic. He also brushed his hair, which is not a thing he traditionally does as far as I’m aware.
Jessie Ware has been nominated for album of the year. She arrived on the red carpet dressed as a sexy funeral home magnate.
Arlo Parks wins the award for best colour co-ordination, featuring a matching suit and hairdo. I cannot think of anything snarky to say about this.
Rag’n’Bone Man looked absolutely chuffed to be there.
Not sure the coat/neckerchief/weird T-shirt combo worked all that well, but he’s only human after all.
Este, Danielle and Alana Haim competed to see who could be the most effortlessly fashionable. I cannot tell you who won because I can’t tell which sister is which.
Joel Corry has been nominated for three awards, and unless I am very much mistaken, the fancy thing pinned to his lapel signifies that he has been designated Hand of the King.
Three words popped into my head when I saw Olly Alexander, and those words were: Cruella De Vil. I’m really not sure why. Cruella De Vil never wore the severed wrists of a gorilla Halloween costume on her arms.
Anyway, 10/10 would recommend.
Here we see the pop group Little Mix.
I wrote an entire dumb paragraph about how their 2016 single Work From Home was weirdly prescient, given COVID, before I realised that was a Fifth Harmony song.
As you can see, they are not amused.
Rina Sawayama showed up in a dress of cascading lilac ruffles.
Now, a quick self-congratulatory aside here.
Looking at this outfit was like looking at a celebrated piece of abstract art. I knew it was supposed to mean something, but I didn’t know what. So after writing that first line, I Googled it.
I did not find the answer. What I did find was this article in Vogue, written by someone who actually knows stuff about fashion. And guess how that person described this dress? As a “voluminous lilac gown with a cut-out bodice and a skirt of cascading ruffles”.
Astonishing. Ninety minutes of red carpet coverage and I’m already using the proper jargon.
I still don’t know what the dress means though.
Clearly, one member of Biffy Clyro was not included in the group text. As a result, he showed up wearing my typical eveningwear.
Give that man a whiskey, plonk him down in front of a decades-old series of Survivor, and we’ll be completely indistinguishable.
Here is MNEK, midway through his transformation into some sort of sea creature.
Shifting to a different part of the animal kingdom, Lianne La Havas came as a tiger.
Whereas Adam Lambert preferred a noble leopard motif.
Finally, let’s finish with Tallia Storm, who accessorised with a purse so small I initially thought it was a very sparkly pack of gum.
So there you go, a bunch of photos of relatively famous people wearing clothes.
Thanks for reading. Next time we do this, we’ll probably get someone who knows what they’re talking about.
Originally published as BRIT Awards 2021: Best and worst dressed on the red carpet
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