Oscars 2013: Hairstyles, the long and the short of it

Sunday night’s 85th Academy Awards style was, as Times fashion critic Booth Moore pointed out, all about extremes.

While Moore was referring to the complete red carpet looks -- the gowns, the jewels and the like -- one might have come to the same conclusion even if the awards had only been broadcast from the neck up, thanks to the wildly divergent hairstyles.

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Most noticeable was the full, luxurious head of hair tossed over -- and cascading down -- one shoulder. We’re not sure whether it reminded us of Veronica Lake or simply Kim Basinger’s “look-a-Lake” from “L.A. Confidential,” either way it was an unmistakeably old Hollywood vibe embraced by the likes of Jessica Chastain, Zoe Saldana, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jennifer Hudson and Reese Witherspoon.

(During the E! Entertainment pre-show coverage, Witherspoon was asked about the secret to getting her hair to look the way it did. Her response? “I recently had a baby.”)

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At the other end of the spectrum was the close-cropped cut, most visible on the night’s supporting actress winner Anne Hathaway and the statuesque Charlize Theron, who told red-carpet press her severe blond ‘do was three months grown in from a role-required head-shaving.

High-profile as they were, the A-list coifs were hardly the only haircuts generating buzz throughout the night. The best example came amid the unexpected tie for sound editing (only the sixth tie in Oscar history, it turns out). First to accept was a man-maned Paul N.J. Ottosson for his work on “Zero Dark Thirty,” followed by “Skyfall” winners Per Hallberg and Karen Baker Landers -- sporting strikingly similar long, blond locks of their own.

“Tomorrow every below-the-line guy starts growing out his hair,” noted one Twitter user. “What is [sic] with the long and silky on all the guys? Long-haired men in the technical categories are trending for sure,” tweeted another.

Add a similar hairstyle for Claudio Miranda -- cinematography winner for “Life of Pi” -- and it was enough to make Los Angeles Times colleague Reed Johnson react with a cinematic reference of his own with his tweeted observation: “Isn’t it great that so many award winners are honoring Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion with their hairstyles?”

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