Replies

Slow.Down.Everybody.

Florence Pugh shaved her head for a movie, “We Live in Time,” which also stars Andrew Garfield. I’ve not tracked this movie and don’t know anything about it except that it’s said to be a romance. Which could be just about anything in Hollywood today, but I assume boy meets girl will be in there somewhere.

30 seconds of intensive sleuthing don’t turn up any details. Filming started March 30 in London. I don’t know if it has wrapped. I’ve not seen any hints on the plot.

Why is her head shaved in the movie? I have no idea. If it’s a romance, maybe it’s a tragic romance and she’s a cancer patient. Maybe she’s just a very weird young lady who is making some kind of statement. Make up your own story. But her head is shaved for the movie.

Anyhow, she is now 27 years old, no longer a kid, with a booming career. She is a A-lister on the fashion and red carpet circuits, modelling for one or another of the top fashion houses. Of course she was at the Met Gala. It’s part of her job. I hope she got a big check.

Her hair hasn’t grown back out from the film. (For all I know, they’re still filming.) So the question was simply whether to wear a wig or lean into the bald look and go for something over the top.

This was for the Met Gala, aka the Anna Wintour/Vogue celebrity freakshow circus. Anna Wintour is said to personally approve all the dresses and looks of all the paid models. And the big fashion houses, which write most of the big checks, are run by some very strange people. Of course they opted to go with the bald look and an over the top outfit. I think it looks awful and probably so do you, but these gals get paid to model clothes, and they develop a thick hide. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and these gals aren’t dressing for themselves at the Met Gala.

I don’t pay much attention to fashion, but given my still-recent new hobby as an underground movie critic, I do sometimes glance at the photo galleries from the big events, mainly to check up on my personal favorites if I’m rooting for X from movie Y. The major red carpet events are all over the place in terms of classy vs. trashy, but the Met Gala seems to work hard to win the outrageousness derby.

With scattered exceptions, the ladies (in many cases, the very same ladies) looked pretty classy at the SAG Awards and Independent Spirit Awards. The Met Gala/Anna Wintour/Vogue show, however, is on the cringeworthy end of the spectrum. This has become the event’s brand. I wonder how many of the actresses and models are secretly rooting for the day that Anna Wintour steps down. The event is a fundraiser for a wing of the Metropolitan Museum. Anna Wintour took over many years ago as the chairman and built it into a fundraising juggernaut, so I’ll give her credit for doing the heavy lifting for many years in what is a volunteer job. But with regard to fashion choices, the lunatics are running the asylum at that one.