Even if Billie Eilish doesn’t walk out of the 94th Annual Academy Awards with the Best Original Song Oscar, she will forever be a winner for what she wore at the Mar. 27 event. Billie, 20, left jaws dropped, and wigs snatched when she arrived at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California. Though the “Bad Guy” singer first rose to fame in oversized streetwear, the baggy shorts and sweaters were left at home. Instead, Billie opted to deliver a fashion moment. She arrived in a dress made out of black ruffles by Gucci as if she was channeling a Victorian dream. It was glamour the way that only Billie could bring.
“For me, fashion has really, since I can really remember, been my kind of expressing tool and how I convey my feelings and how I feel about myself and my mood and all of the above,” Billie said in an in-depth interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “And it’s really like a security blanket for me and always has been since literally, I can’t even remember when it wasn’t. And I have this feeling that I’ve had for many years that’s kind of this thing about myself where no matter, looking back at myself in the past, no matter how weird I thought I dressed or looked, or did this or that, as long as I was being genuine and that’s really what I was wanting to wear at the time, I’m always going to look at that and be proud of myself for doing that.”
Billie added that she turned 15 or 16, she started to develop her fashion identity and how she wanted to present herself to the world. “[N]o matter how crazy it looks to me now, I will always respect that girl and respect that feeling of power, and this is what I’m presenting myself as and that’s it, period,” she told THR. “if I feel uncomfortable in something that I’m wearing, I just don’t feel like myself, and I feel like a fraud, and I feel angry, and I feel overstimulated. It’s interesting. It’s interesting how fashion has always made me or broke me.”
The 2022 Oscars may be a night that Billie walks out a winner. She and her brother, Finneas O’Connell, are the favorites to win the Best Original Song award for their theme to the James Bond film, No Time To Die. The competition is rough, however. They’re up against Lin-Manuel Miranda (“Dos Oruguitas” from Encanto), Diane Warren (“Somehow You Do” from Four Good Days), Van Morrison (“Down to Joy,” from Belfast), and Beyoncé (“Be Alive,” from King Richard). Billie is set to perform the song during the broadcast, and she may just end the night halfway to an EGOT.