Comparisons are Odious

Sky Movies & In Style’s Top 10 Best Film Costume poll
1.Keira Knightley’s green silk dress in Atonement
2. Marilyn Monroe’s white dress in The Seven Year Itch
3. Audrey Hepburn’s little black dress in Breakfast at Tiffany’s
4. Olivia Newton-John’s skin-tight pants in Grease
5. Kate Winslet’s blue gown in Titanic...
The fleeting intrigue of celebrity and fame means you can be famous one moment and forgotten the next. You may also be famous and known (by everyone worth knowing) in your lifetime and become nearly extinct from the history books in the next decade (Bella Fromm, Gertrude Bell, Grace Dalrymple; to name a few ladies who were part of “the Set” during their lives and most of us can not name today). The point I am trying to make is that the relevance of a truly famous or influential person/idea/thing is to remain in permanence in our conscious, enduring the test of time.
To this point an inspection of the recent “Best Film Costume” poll makes the list rather irrelevant, the comparisons odious. Keira Knightley’s green dress, though stunning can not hold a candle to the flame of Audrey Hepburn’s little black dress—since it has not endured the whimsy of public attention, nor has it (and will never) become a household statement. What woman does not feel a little black dress is ideal in simple chic (it has even earned the moniker of LBD)? When choosing my own prom dress I even sought out a halter dress in the style of Marilyn Monroe’s white dress in the Seven Year Itch, to give me that “va-va-voom” factor.
It frustrates me to no end when currently “big” stars are compared to older historic figures and given rank over them. Can Corey Kennedy (Internet It girl) really be fairly equated to Clara Bow (the original It-girl, whom the term was coined for)? Corey K’s entire relevance rests on the time frame of her fame; in ten years will her name still be on the tip of our tongues? There are plenty of old screen actresses who had paychecks as large as Clara Bow’s in her day, but it would be difficult to name them now. To be fair, Corey might be remembered in history as a relic of the Internet craze, a pioneer of online media (and shameless self-promotion), but it is equally likely she will fade into triviality, and only time will tell.
In the end of the day any list ranking or comparing two dissimilar items (made different by time or their own differences) only belittles the items being compared. Can Audrey Hepburn ever be compared to Katherine Hepburn as style icons or actresses? Their only similarities seem to be their surnames and lasting fame. With such dissimilar personal style and film roles to rank one beneath the other seems particularly averse—were these ladies ever in competition with one another in life? Is it far to bait them against one another now? Some will always be attracted to the sleek styling of Audrey and others will be drawn to the easy androgyny of Katherine—in the end it is the prerogative of each person to decide whom to favor and who to remember.