"Only one of the great cinematic costume designers would come to the awards dressed like a bag lady."
If people weren't so quick to jump on the "blame the white guy" wagon... you'd see that it was actually a pretty clever statement.
Now I'm not going to go to twitter about it, it didn't offend me but it did come across rather mean and crass.
Fry's post says that one of the problems is due to people being offended on behalf of other people they have never met.
So they are not offended personally (e.g like most people), but they imagine that it would be offensive to someone else (e.g. a minority) and decide to co-opt this imagined offence.
It's a curious difference in being offended personally, and defending others via imagining the offence of that other. One can see another point of view, but its harder to imagine another changing their point of view.
I personally think he was out of line and even with the context of they were friends I think it was a mis-judged joke. I'm not going to go on social media to tell him about it but my opinion of him has certainly changed based on this behaviour.
So lets break that down.
The subject is a "cinematic costume designer" According to Sir Fry, she is a great one at that.
Then we have the other part of the statement: "She came to the awards dressed as a bag lady." This part of the statement is a bit odd/stands out when compared to a group of rather posh individuals.
When you put both parts of this together you have a really positive reference by Mr. Fry then combined with an odd/"less flattering" situation. It's ironic.
This structure matches a classic setup/punchline structure of a joke: http://www.creatingacomic.com/2009/how-to-write-a-joke-joke-...
What make this even funnier and more congratulating is: She's a costume designer. Maybe this was intended. At the end of the day Stephen Fry was pictured with the individual and there have been claims that there is no bad blood between the two.
Mr. Fry did not say: "Shes a bag lady, too poor to receive this award. Just take a look at her clothes"
That could be considered a joke at the expectation of being posh, at a highly honor awards ceremony, and would be considered offensive to the subject and maybe the audience.