Oh, God, Is Kristen Stewart’s 2022 Oscar Look Going to Bring Back Formal Shorts?

Let’s get one thing straight: Spencer star Kristen Stewart’s Oscar look was perfection. Perfection. I’m no fashion expert—I leave all that to my brilliant colleagues—but the moment I saw her summit the red carpet in an open white shirt, crisp black suit jacket, and matching micro-shorts (all courtesy of Chanel), my jaw quite literally dropped. To paraphrase the late, great André Leon Talley, in a red-carpet landscape that so often seemed like a famine of beauty (and innovation and risk-taking), here, at last, was a feast.

I loved everything about Stewart’s look, including—especially?—her change into white socks and loafers, and as a queer woman, seeing Stewart arrive at Hollywood’s biggest night with fiancée Dylan Meyer felt particularly meaningful to me. (The casual, spontaneous nature of the kiss that the two exchanged on the red carpet had me wiping an honest-to-God tear from my eye, because 15-year-old Twihard me could simply never have imagined that the star of my favorite film franchise could come out and look so happy…or, for that matter, that I could.)

Now that I’ve extolled the virtues of Stewart’s Oscar look and the apparent joy of her relationship, let’s get down to brass tacks. I am, in a word, terrified that the stunning success of her custom Chanel ensemble will inspire a resurgence in arguably the most chilling trend to come out of the early to mid aughts: formal shorts. I just can’t do it again, guys. I don’t have it in me. Board shorts and bike shorts, I’m more than okay with, but the luxe, frequently pinstripe kind that The O.C.’s Marissa Cooper would so often pair with a barely-there tube top and—horror of horrors—a shrug? No, thank you.

I’m not a huge shorts wearer at the best of times, but as I’ve come into a growing appreciation for my fat body and how good eye-catching clothes look on it, I’ve allowed the occasional pair of jean shorts to enter my closet. (And I do have a skort I’m particularly fond of, loath as I am to admit it.) In my mind, though, I associate aughts-era formal shorts with the societal scourge of the going-out top, a vestige of my college days best left in the Stoli-vanilla-vodka-soaked recesses of my undergraduate memory.