"The thing that lots of people are missing is that I was wearing a costume. A homage to Mad Max."

"I look ridiculous in frocks. I can’t wear heels – my back goes out and my feet get terribly sore. And besides, I have no interest in clothes other than what they tell me about a person. I am a storyteller – I’m not interested in fashion. Other than people like Alexander McQueen. The rest of it is just so much Cinderella stuff.... I don’t mean that as an insult to Cinderella. It’s just – fashion like that is just telling one story. Catwalk models: not only do they all walk the same way, they all look identical. It’s only the clothes that change. Whereas when I’m researching something, I go and sit in a relevant café and just watch people, which is completely fascinating. For myself, I just wear black and white. I want to be in the background."

Said Jenny Beavan — about why she wore what she wore when she won the Oscar for costume design. Beavan is 65 — same age as me — and the way she looked, she got mocked as a "bag lady" and as "a rude woman" who "plainly could not be bothered... self-absorbed and childish... puffed up by her own ego."

Back in 1987, she also won an Oscar. It was for "Room with a View" — which was a very un-Mad-Max-y movie. Here's how that looked... with Lauren Bacall announcing the thing (looking very 80s):



Beavan doesn't appear until 8:18 — there's a lot of 80s dancing in the process of listing the nominees — and she's wearing a sort of tuxedo. I wondered what was the best costume for the day.