On April 3, Hollywood celebrated the annual Grammy Music Awards, a ceremony that celebrates the previous years’ most talented artists across multiple genres. The music scene of 2021 saw new artists undergo an extreme rise in popularity, and reinforce the already known artists from the past decade. However, a large percentage of watchers view this commemoration of talented artists for one sole purpose: the extravagant designer outfits. Although this aspect disregards the main reason for the event, it is possibly the main driving factor in the function’s success. 

It is evident that designers use large celebrity events as promotion opportunities for their clothing businesses. All fashionistas acknowledge that the fashion industry thrives off of these huge opportunities for sponsorship. An article from the Wall Street Journal addresses this exact idea through explaining that, “the business of the red carpet has become more complicated. Increasingly, major fashion labels sign stars to agreements that pay them to wear the label on the red carpet.” Although fashion is not supposed to be the main theme of the evening, it undoubtedly has evolved into the centerpiece of the Grammys throughout the years.

Nevertheless, fashion taking over the purpose of the show is not necessarily a bad thing. In several cases, it promotes the success of celebrities when a whole new audience is drawn into watching the award ceremonies, even if it is for different reasons. 

To put this into a clearer outlook, we can look at the up-and-coming artist of the year: Olivia Rodrigo. Just this past year, she won three different Grammy awards for her hit album Sour. Of course, she would have already had fans who knew her and therefore watched the Grammys for that specific purpose. However, of that large demographic of people who watched the Grammys for the fashion offering, some were likely unfamiliar with her music. But, as a result of their interest in celebrity fashion during the award show, they witnessed her talent firsthand and, if interested, likely further explored her music after the show. 

As has been made clear, music award ceremonies are a connecting bridge between the worlds of music and fashion. Although it could be argued that the Grammys are a simple function for acknowledging the achievements of artists in the past year, that would be ignoring all of the underground reasons for its genuine success. When you really think about it, how many people would consistently tune in to a several-hours long award show if all of the celebrities they admired were dressed in mundane and dull clothes?