Better sharpen your nails, kids, it's time to rip those uppity actresses a new hem. Yep, Oscar night tomorrow is the world prom: We the humble fans can gleefully feed on every dress on the backs of the nominees, the presenters and the ingenue paparazzi fodder.
One girl on a sofa is a potato; a hundred million gals on sofas makes a lot of mash. Get us focused on the year's It dress and the designer name attached to it gets the equivalent of $25-million (U.S.) in press, says Bronwyn Cosgrave in her just-released book, Made for Each Other: Fashion and the Academy Awards.
Daria and her slinky ilk may be pounding the Paris catwalks this week, but the most important fashion moment of the year is tomorrow night, on the red carpet leading into Hollywood's Kodak Theater.
This shift of power is all the more important because the broadcast is global. Hollywood is now writing the world's fashion script.
"Red carpet dressing has become another valuable way to extend the brand on an international basis in a highly competitive market," says Shauna Brooks, vice-president of marketing and communications for David Yurman, the celeb-friendly jewellery company hoping to hit a few top names out of the park tomorrow.
The Oscars, says Brooks, stands golden head and shoulders above all other photo ops. "They have their own special place," and the value to a luxury house of that prime placement can almost not be defined.
The scramble through closets is not new. "In the leading actress category, the dress was always a talking point," Cosgrave said over a recent lunch in Toronto. And just as important, "The clothes very much reflect the era."
Which is why, in this excessive age, every inch of an actress's body is up for grabs, from tiara to toes. The chosen few are positively drowned in options, and as the stakes rise, the corporate tactics intensify. Private planes, private fashion shows, the private attentions of design maestros. Some jewellery companies have been tossing bling at stars for years, along with cash to wear the stuff in heavy-camera zones (David Yurman says it does not).
There have been a flurry of reports that actresses are paid to wear labels. But the major fashion houses, such as Oscar mainstays Armani and Chanel, maintain firmly that celebrities do not need to be paid to wear their gowns.
What Cosgrave did discover in the months she spent chasing down past and current designers and stylists is that "the dress" has always been political.
Through the Second World War, for instance, nominees were instructed to wear sombre black semi-formal outfits. In our own era, there was the red ribbon.
Then there was Elizabeth Taylor's 1961 gown, which perfectly framed her recent tracheotomy scar when she appeared from her bedside to accept an Oscar for Butterfield 8.
Speaking of divas, in 1969 Barbra Streisand famously wore a sheer trouser suit and a stoned Elliot Gould on her arm on the red carpet.
The seventies were no-nonsense, with Julie Christie, Jane Fonda, Diana Ross and Streisand all wearing pantsuits.
The eighties were all about Cher in her legendary Bob Mackie skimpy showgal costumes. "No one ever topped that," says Cosgrave, who misses those kerfuffles terribly. "Taste can be overrated." By the nineties, "in a cycle that again reflects society," it was all about the end of the millennial angsty decadence and "the bejeweled shoe."
Right about then, the red carpet became hotter than the half-time show at Super Bowl. Hundreds of hosts with hungry microphones started to line the entrance to the show to discuss who was wearing what. The preshow now lasts several hours, a festival of designer propaganda.
