Oscars 2023: Why has the Academy done away with the ‘red’ carpet this year?

Why champagne?

The decision to go champagne was taken by creative consultants Lisa Love (long-time Vogue contributor) and Raúl Àvila (creative director for the glamourous Met Gala in New York). Love said that apart from ‘champagne’, the carpet’s colouring can also be described as ‘sand’.

According to the Associated Press, Love also pointed out that there wasn’t any debate over the change, and they just knew they had the freedom to break from tradition. She added that she and Àvila tried some other colours as well, but they came off as too dark in the tent.

“We chose this beautiful sienna, saffron colour that evokes the sunset, because this is the sunset before the golden hour,” Love said. As a result, they chose a lighter colour, which was approved by Academy CEO Bill Kramer.

Jimmy Kimmel, who is hosting the ceremony this year, said, “I think the decision to go with a champagne carpet over a red carpet shows how confident we are that no blood will be shed.”

Apart from this, Love and Àvila weren’t too concerned about the possibility of upsetting Oscars traditionalists either. “Somebody’s always got a way to find something wrong with something,” Love said.

“This is just a lightness and hopefully people like it. It doesn’t mean that it’s always going to be a champagne colored carpet,” she added.

To ease people into the changes, Love mentioned that there’s no reason to use the term ‘red carpet’ anyway. After all, it’s more of a shorthand for the glamour associated with the event, than for the actual colour of the carpet. As American costume designer Edith Head said in 1970, “You’re going to see at the Academy Awards the world’s greatest fashion show… you’re going to have fashions from every great designer all over the world modelled by the most beautiful women in the world, the Hollywood stars.”

When did the first Oscars red carpet appear?

The Oscars red carpet dates back to 1961, the year of the 33rd Academy Awards. It was the first time the ceremony was televised, with ABC broadcasting it and Bob Hope hosting it.

However, the red carpet wasn’t seen by the public in all its glory till 1966, when the Oscars were broadcast in colour for the first time.

Origins of the red carpet

As reported earlier in The Indian Express, the first known reference to the red carpet was probably made in Agamemnon, a 458 BC play by Greek playwright Aeschylus, where Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife, rolls down a crimson carpet for the king after he returns home triumphant from the Trojan War. However, both wife and husband have found love outside their marriage, leading to tragic consequences.

In the play, Clytemnestra asks Agamemnon to walk the “crimson carpet”. With the colour at that time associated with the gods and not meant for the mortals, she is, in fact, inviting his death. The lines in the play read: “Now my beloved, step down from your chariot, and let not your foot, my lord, touch the Earth. Servants, let there be spread before the house he never expected to see, where Justice leads him in, a crimson path.”

In a 1993 article titled ‘Politics of Consumption and Generosity in the Carpet Scene of the Agamemnon’, Gregory Crane, a professor at Tufts University, suggests that rolling out the red carpet for royalty might have been an old custom in the Near East.

The significance of the colour red arises from the fact that it was affordable only to the elite in medieval Europe, with scarlet being one of the most expensive dyes. Several Renaissance paintings have red carpets as a symbol of opulence and also for deities. And even though red dye became much more accessible after the Industrial Revolution and the invention of synthetic dyes, the associated connotations of luxury continue to this day.

In Hollywood, the red carpet reportedly arrived in 1922 when American showman and theatre owner Sid Grauman rolled out a red carpet at the premiere of Robin Hood at Egyptian Theatre (which is now owned by Netflix), and actor Douglas Fairbanks became one of the first stars to walk on it.

(With agency inputs)