Shailene Woodley’s stylist: people were ‘rude and mean’ about Shailene’s Emmys’ look

Shailene Woodley’s mismatched Balenciaga outfit at the Emmys was swiftly and near-universally declared the worst of the night. Shailene was at the top of every worst-dressed list with almost no competition. Maybe there were worse outfits on lesser-known celebrities, but people weren’t talking about them. There were elements of Shailene’s look that may have worked, the sequin pants were cool, but the gloves, necklace, too-loose bright top and styling were a total miss.

In my coverage of her look, I mentioned her stylist, Karla Welch, by name. Someone sent her out looking like that and I thought we should talk about it! Karla also styles Olivia Wilde, Tracee Ellis Ross and Sarah Paulson, all of whom are known for divisive fashion. Only Tracee pulls it off consistently, but I digress.

Karla heard people talking about Shailene and she thinks the negative reactions say so much about them! Instead of addressing the well-deserved criticism, she focused on the few people who were rude, because it’s always easy to strawman Internet arguments. Here is what she wrote on Threads along with some of my favorite responses. (I’m not crediting people by username because I’m not sure all of them would want that.) To her credit Karla left this thread up. I think I know why, which I’ll discuss in a moment.

Initial thread: karlawelchstylist
Love or hate something fine but it’s an opinion and it can even be a conversation but being super rude and mean and taking glee from it, well that says a lot more about the mouths it’s coming from. 🖤

Selected top responses
You did a HORRIBLE job and a disservice to your client. Learn from this.
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Really? now you are upset because people are justifiably calling you out?
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What it says is that lay people, not professional stylists, know what looks bad and you made her look really bad.
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the hair, the gloves, everything just didn’t flow. It’s like she got styled by some lady at the goodwill store on 75% red tag days.
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You know you did her dirty
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There’s a difference between simply not liking the colour or style and an outfit that doesn’t fit properly because the details weren’t thought through. The top needed wider, lower underarm cutouts, and the pants looked like they were almost falling off. When you can clearly see that the outfit doesn’t flatter her body type, how can you let her walk out like this, especially for such an important occasion. This feels like such a huge letdown.

[From Threads]

As of publication time the pinned thread on Karla’s account is a photo of Shailene dressed up before the Emmys looking like she’s about to cry. That’s next to a photo of the words “trigger warning” in white typewriter font on a black background. This lady knows what she’s doing! Shailene’s outfit was a deliberate troll, and complaining about “mean” people was a way to extend the news cycle. We’re a little late to the pity party, but we’re talking about this on the Friday after the Emmys so it worked.

Given that Shailene switched her after party look to remove the goofy gloves and wear a Laurie Anderson t-shirt over that loose cleavage-baring vest, I would assume she didn’t like it either. Karla is complaining about the complaints instead of owning up to her mistake. I wonder if she apologized to Shailene and if Shailene is going to keep working with her.

I can’t let you go without mentioning my favorite response to her pinned thread of Shailene’s outfit. “Is she about to deliver a calf?!”