Power Suits and Ugly Butter at Glamour's Woman of the Year Awards

Monday night at Glamour's annual Woman of the Year Awards in New York City, many of our most important cultural and political luminaries, and Tinsley Mortimer, walked the red carpet in the name of Empowerment.

In addition to being inspiring and powerful, sweet holy god on a stick, some of them looked fantastic.

Lupita Nyong'o was best-dressed by far, furthering her reputation as a fashion icon in Chanel haute couture that included what appeared to be a sequined, one-legged bike short. Everyone looks kind of janky in a bike short, but Nyong'o added a faux Nehru collar and didn't even have to stand in red carpet stance (TM: one leg coyly crossed over the other) to stunt upon it. She even rocked some glasses onstage.

Still, Karlie Kloss and Freida Pinto, goddesses who I don't even understand, each wore shimmery cut-out gowns (by Alexander McQueen and Jason Wu, respectively) that challenged us to not think of them as figures right out of Greek myth. Alternately, Victoria Rowell was channeling true Executive Realness, and showed us how to take your look from office to church to the clurb without a hitch. Stunning.

Faring not as well: those who didn't seem to take this event all that seriously.

There are DIGNITARIES here, for god's sakes. Zosia Mamet has apparently been spending too much time in Los Angeles because her bustier and trousers are more appropriate for a beach day before catching a Best Coast show at the Smell than an important awards ceremony such as this. Haim actually is from LA, and while I like the contrasting monochrome, they too look like they're headed to 1OAK after this. Take Carrie Preston with you, no? And while I understand Cat Greenleaf's look conceptually, satin Converse with an evening gown does not present you as "kicky" or "irreverent," but more like a preschool teacher. Combat boots would have been a better look.

Leather in butter is apparently hot with the fashion set, as seen on Anna Wintour and Natalia Vodianova, but it's just making us hungry. For the 1970s.

Karen Elson's McQueen gown is beautiful, but the drape is not working, and giving her a frumpiness that is impossible and shocking. Karen Elson and frumpy should not be in the same sentence, but here we are. Meanwhile, Tinsley Mortimer is dressed in the same motif as what I imagine is her stately receiving room: overdone elegance in garish royal shades that scream, "LOOK AT ME MOTHERFUCKERS! I'M RICH!"

Because the Woman of the Year Awards Mean Business, these women dressed to Handle It.

Hillary Clinton's signature pantsuit was a dignitary red over some black pants—the shade of the fountain pen she'll be using to veto bad legislation if she becomes president, perhaps?—while Shonda Rhimes' black drape and Mindy Kaling's shift dress in periwinkle updated the power silhouette for someone whose job description entails Frequent Instagramming. Another besuited bosswoman: Coco Rocha.

Honorable mention: Whoopi Goldberg, who went Health Goth and was both #ontrend and fugnacious—but in a normcore way, where ugly is the equivalent to hotness.

Here, she attended in postal worker blues (I think those are actually, in fact, official USPS-issue garments), augmenting her look with some asymmetrical pumps with a heel that looks like the word "bazoooing!" Are those McQueen? Kawakubo? She looks like she just stepped out of the Opening Ceremony catalog. V-Files needs to interview her immediately.

Hands-down best-dressed: these attendees from Glamour's Girl Project, a new nonprofit created to help send girls around the world to school. The most gorgeous.

Images via Getty