On the Oscars red carpet, the invisible man and the defiant woman

The Oscars have been caught flat-footed by the persistent demurral of stars unwilling to participate in the once-obligatory step-and-strut, the designer name-checking, the preshow interviews, the scrutiny of the relentless likes of Joan Rivers that left on-air talent floundering.

Nude hasn’t signified Caucasian at least since Crayola crayons changed Flesh to Peach in 1962. (Memo to E!'s Brad Goreski.) Particularly in a year when the conversation shifted importantly from what women in entertainment are wearing to what’s on their minds, a year in which diversity, inclusion and pay parity became inevitable conversations in Hollywood, there was something bracing in what appeared to be an unspoken consensus among women in the business to bypass the quid pro quo of fashion in pursuit of other ideals.

The Oscars come at the end of a monthslong slog for many in the industry, campaigns pursued with military rigor and zeal. Starting with the Toronto Film Festival in September, many of those in pursuit of a gold statuette, or even the next project, have traditionally relied on designers to keep them in free duds and jewelers (which provide the most lucrative endorsements) to pay the bills. The payoff is obvious.

“Look, it’s not working in the rice fields, but it is work,” said the stylist Elizabeth Saltzman, who dressed Saoirse Ronan in a Calvin Klein gown. The light pink frock was designed by Belgian-born Raf Simons, newly an immigrant to the United States, who summoned up the considerable skills developed during his tenure at Dior to create a couture-quality gown for a label best known for producing American sportswear and underpants.

Oscars night is the victory lap, Saltzman explained. In a subtle gesture of feminist solidarity, the actresses on this particular night seemed in agreement that, no matter how glamorous and costly the frock might have been, it would not wear them.

It is easy to imagine how this played with the global labels that spent months and countless dollars courting the talent, sending couriers and seamstresses whizzing across the planet to ensure that on this one night it would be Margot Robbie in Chanel haute couture, or Allison Janney in a startlingly chic red Reem Acra dress with a plunging neckline and angel sleeves, or Zendaya in a single-shoulder creation by Giambattista Valli reminiscent of old Hollywood.

In an odd way it was that era, seemingly long gone as the real power in the movie business has migrated to television and the internet, that was most lovingly referenced in clothes at the Oscars. Sure, people pinned Time’s Up buttons to their frocks and tuxedos, in solidarity with victims of sexual misconduct and a nascent effort to address systematic gender disparities in an industry in which a mere 4 percent of directors are women. But that seemed like an afterthought in the pursuit of old school glamour, but with a signal difference.

Rather than billboard overt politics at the Oscars — in the manner of Jane Fonda, who once wore black to the ceremony to protest the Vietnam War, or Katharine Hepburn, who once showed up looking like as if she’d happened by after cleaning out her garage, or Cher, who once dressed in a feathered headpiece, a Vegas version of Native American regalia, to flout a newly issued set of Academy strictures regarding appropriate dress — the actresses this year largely attired themselves in curve hugging dresses and daring décolletage. To this viewer, at least, this decision seemed like a bold rebuke to any man who ever deluded himself into thinking a woman reveling in her own sexuality was asking for it.

The men at the Oscars were a study in sobriety. That set of evening clothes termed a tuxedo is probably the most bombproof uniform in existence. Case in point, the velvet shawl-collared two-tone tuxedo from Brunello Cucinelli that Daniel Kaluuya wore.

By and large, most men on Oscars night — with the admirably wacko exception of Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon, dressed in a shoulderless Moschino tuxedo that included a harness (ready for the after party!), and Armie Hammer, in a tuxedo colored the hue of a red velvet cake and that looked as if it had been saved from a prom, and also the fashion novice Timothée Chalamet, who pulled off a white suit from the Berluti designer Haider Ackermann, whose fashion show in Paris this January was the first he had ever attended — chose restraint over ostentation. They were, for a welcome change, well fitted in their clothes, minus the bad shoes, the wing collars and the pooling trouser hems that caused one to wonder in Oscars past how Brad Pitt’s stylist stayed employed. They favored the midnight blue hues that — as the media savvy Duke of Windsor was early to note — register on camera as true black. And, in an anachronistic gesture that was entirely welcome, they receded into the background in traditional fashion, the better to efface their own presence and permit the women around them to shine.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.