The Oscars this year don’t simply include extravagant jewelry. Oscar candidates including Cate Blanchett and Bill Nighy donned blue ribbon pins to the 95th annual Academy Awards on Sunday in Los Angeles to support international asylum seekers.
The blue ribbons were made on behalf of the UNHCR Coalition and are meant to represent “support for refugees and displaced people around the world,” according to a UNHCR statement. The buttons are a part of the coalition’s effort #WithRefugees, which aims to “send a powerful visual message that everyone has the right to seek safety, whoever, wherever, whenever.”
Blue ribbons may have been seen on the red carpet during the 2023 BAFTAs. They were worn by Jamie Lee Curtis and Angela Bassett to the February British Awards ceremony. For her part in “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once,” Curtis, who was nominated, claimed that Blanchett gave her the idea to wear the pin.
In the midst of the season of bright goods, “my friend Cate Blanchett is asking people to remind us all that, of course, there are terrible refugee crises going on all over the world everywhere at once, and we need to do our part,” added Curtis.
Each ribbon was handmade by the Knotty Tie Co. in Denver. The local haberdashery helps refugees secure jobs, training, and education.
Blanchett explained why the cause is so important to her in a message to the media. As a UNHCR ambassador since 2016, Blanchett remarked, “What has struck me whenever I have met refugees — in places like Lebanon, Jordan, or Bangladesh, in the U.K., or back home in Australia — has not been their ‘otherness,’ but how many things we share in common.”
The annual Oscars honor excellence in cinematography, film, and character animators. Jimmy Kimmel is the program’s host this year. Rihanna and Lady Gaga will perform, and Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Janelle Monáe, and others will serve as presenters. The red carpet was replaced with a champagne-colored one for the 95th annual ceremony as a design option to improve the picture of the arrivals. Since the 33rd Oscars in 1961, the champagne carpet is the first to depart from red.
