On Sunday, Melissa McCarthy was one of the stars to grace the red carpet of the 2023 Oscars, wearing a cardinal red ball gown designed by celebrity-loved designer Christian Siriano. The gown was made completely from scratch only days before the highly anticipated night after the original gown was ruined by a burst pipe in Siriano’s design studio.
The actress, who stars in the upcoming live-action retelling of Disney’s The Little Mermaid as Ursula, paired the stunning ensemble with a classic updo with face-framing pieces.
Siriano appeared on E!’s red carpet pre-show, where he explained how the dress came to be. “We were just freaking out all day,” he shared. However, being the quick-witted genius he is, Siriano was able to successfully craft a stunning new ensemble that he hand-delivered to McCarthy on Saturday. “I took the last dress with me on the plane yesterday,” he revealed. “I dropped it off myself.”
McCarthy opened up to InStyle about her last Oscars appearance, in 2019, and the iconic red carpet moment she and her husband, Ben Falcone, shared. “I asked, ‘Can we wear matching tracksuits?’ And someone was like, ‘For tomorrow? Like, that both fit?’ It’s not that easy. I just wanted to be in tennies and tracksuits. It just seemed so funny to me and so comfortable,” she recalled.
The comedic actress went on to say that her wardrobe choice caused quite a stir among fellow partygoers. “I have never been flipped off or told to f— off as much as at that party [laughs], and it was all done, uh, jokingly, but also with something real behind it,” she said.
“[After the ceremony] everyone put on a different dress and different heels. They just totally were like, ‘You go f— yourself [for wearing a tracksuit].’ My response was, ‘Oh, OK, I’m going to go dance pretty hard right now.'”
