- Kate Hudson defended the dress she wore to the 2001 Academy Awards that critics "trashed."
- Hudson posted a TikTok about it just before the Oscars Sunday, saying it was "way ahead" of its time.
Kate Hudson revived a dormant, 22-year-old cultural debate with a March 12 TikTok. In it, the 43-year-old actress revisited a slinky silver dress she said she got "trashed" for wearing to the Academy Awards in 2001 and defended the choice.
Hudson, then 21, was nominated for the best supporting actress award for her role as Penny Lane in the 2000 movie "Almost Famous," and attended the ceremony with her hair up and styled in ringlets, while wearing a silver Stella McCartney gown that Hudson said landed her on "all the worst dressed lists."
The TikTok was posted on Sunday, just hours before the 2023 Oscars, and showed Hudson getting her hair styled. She told viewers she'd initially planned to tell critics "oh, I can understand," but, upon looking at the dress with fresh eyes, she wanted to double down: "This dress is awesome, I love it."
"It's a beautiful silhouette, the back is crazy, the cape is good, I even like the crazy hair that everyone didn't like — I think it looks super cute and different," she explained.
"We were way ahead of our time on this," Hudson said, and then added: "Maybe we should take it out again. Should I re-wear this and restyle it?"
@thekatehudson #greenscreen I still love this dress! @Stella McCartney ❤️ Should we try a redo at some point?? #oscars #almostfamous ♬ Nuthin But A G'Thang - Snoop Dogg & Dr. Dre
The TikTok has garnered about 355,600 views in less than 24 hours. Top comments agreed with Hudson, describing the dress as "magnificent," and calling for "justice for this dress."
"There was an elegance about this dress that people didn't understand," the celebrity gossip site DeuxMoi commented. "You looked like a French movie star."
Others echoed Hudson's assessment that a gown with a cape made of fringe was too avant-garde for the moment and encouraged the actor to rewear it, hypothesizing that the same dress could now land her on a "best dressed" list. "They weren't ready for this look!" one top comment reads.
Nostalgia dressing is a burgeoning marketing tool for celebrities and iconic archival garments have become the fashion status symbol du jour.
It's not the first time Hudson has revisited this particular dress — a deviation from an otherwise broadly crowd-pleasing history in fashion. In a 2011 British Fashion Awards show, Hudson presented McCartney, one of Hudson's best friends since she was 18, with the "Red Carpet Award." In her speech, Hudson recounted a story from the morning after the 2001 Oscars.
"Stella dressed me for my first red carpet event in 2001 for the Academy Awards," Hudson began. "It was my first and only nomination. I was 21 years old and to have Stella McCartney dressing me — well I felt like the hippest, coolest girl in the world."
She continued, "Up until the last minute Stella was working away, hand-sewing the hem. I woke up the next morning in my bed post-awards and without a little statuette on my bedside. I turned on the television to find out I was on every 'worst dressed' list possible. So I called Stella and we just laughed our arses off and she said to me, 'Look, babe, it was the hair wasn't it?'"
McCartney later joked that she "took responsibility" for the cape, and blamed the dress for "why she didn't get the Oscar."
In 2012 while speaking with McCartney at the Vogue festival in London, Hudson said she still had the dress in her closet.
While Hudson lost to Marcia Gay Harden for best supporting actress in 2001 (Harden won for the role in the movie "Pollock"), not everyone remembers it that way. Hours after posting her TikTok, Hudson corrected an interviewer who thought she had already won an Oscar.
"I have never won an Oscar, but I've been nominated," she corrected, then added: "I'm sure it's amazing."
Hudson's most recent film, "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery," was up for the best adapted screenplay at this year's Oscars, but it lost to Sarah Polley's "Women Talking," as Insider's Lauren Edmonds previously reported.