Gwyneth Paltrow's Oscar dress

While I didn't watch the Oscars this year, a lot of the sewing and style blogs I read include pictures of the outfits worn by the celebrity attendees. Apparently dresses with peplums were big-- whatever. :-P My favorite gown, however, surprised me. It was worn by Gwyneth Paltrow and not something I would have expected to like, but I found it elegant in the extreme and absolutely perfect on her.

It's a white Tom Ford column dress inspired by Jackie O's famous 1961 white inaugural ball gown, made by Bergdorf Goodman's Ethel Frankau but designed by the first lady herself.

Frankly I hate Jackie's outfit, I think it's prissy and frumpy and hasn't aged well-- honestly my irritation at the way we've canonized Jackie's style, and in fact her and her whole family, is a subject for a whole other post --but weirdly I love Gwyneth's. The dress itself is simple, fits her well, has an interesting neckline shape, and while normally I would find a cape to be an awkward additional to modern formal wear, this one complements her look perfectly. It has a sleek shape, not to much weight or volume, and I love the way it cuts diagonally over her shoulders but then opens just a little to lay away from the rest of her.

Milanoo.com, a website that sells various sorts of interesting dresses at prices low enough to make me suspect the quality, is offering a replica of this dress at discount, around $127. I confess this tempts me; I like this dress a lot and think it would look good on my body type. I'm not as tall as Gwyneth, which I think helps her pull it off, but I still think it would look nice. But it's not like I need any more dresses, especially formal ones; my thrifting expeditions have yielded more than I have occasion to wear. I definitely should not be spending the money. Also, I am wary of knockoff even in the best of cases. I notice the Milanoo website describes this dress as "one shoulder," but when you see pictures of Gwyneth with the cape off, as it is apparently removable, you can see that it clearly has both sleeves, just an asymmetrical neckline that creates the illusion otherwise when the cape is on. So chances are they screwed up the design.

Hi, Pepper and Tony. Wow, I never noticed how much taller she is than him.

Anyway, so it seems likely that buying this dress from Milanoo would be a waste. Now I'm wondering if I could sew such a thing. It wouldn't have to be an exact replica, I'd just need to make a column dress, maybe emulating the asymmetrical necklace, and figure our how to make a cape that would drape in exactly the same way that this one does. I'm not sure what the fabric should be, probably something smooth but with stretch, given the way it fits. Likely something with crispness to it too, given the folds in the bodice. Not sure I'd need to both copying those, but I do think they're nice. It may yet be beyond my skill, but I'll definitely be adding to it my List of Dresses I Want to Copy Someday, along with the Margaret dress and the Cordelia dress.