News

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.

Cosgrave's book is best on the modern hits we like to chew up and revisit. How Renée Zellwegger came to wear the stunning yellow Jean Desses vintage in 2001. The private audience with John Galliano that resulted in Nicole Kidman selecting the chartreuse couture number that set a standard for a generation.

Some gowns have caused a knockoff furor. The dress Halle Berry by Lebanese designer Elie Saabscreamed in when she won for Monster's Ball launched his career and resulted in thousands of high schoolers strapping on voluminous burgundy skirts with embroidered tops.

Worst was the 1999 Gwyneth Paltrow prissiness by Ralph Lauren. The pink sweetheart gown she sobbed into was a huge hit in Wal-Marts everywhere for grad season.

As for this year, all eyes are on Dreamgirl Jennifer Hudson, the runner-up Idol who translated her dream into reality (and a Vogue cover next month). Hudson is the big breath of fresh air in a sea of size 0s, the curvy woman all the designers want to dress: Michael Kors, who put her in burgundy glitter for the Golden Globes, was nearly hospitalized with rapture: "I knew she would be perfect in burgundy" he told the tabs.

Helen Mirren has been enjoying the kind of slavish praise usually reserved for 18-year-olds. Designers are aching to cradle her cleavage.

Ditto Dame Judi Dench and Meryl Streep (who is odds-on to show up in, you guessed it, Prada). Then there's the little girl nominated for Little Miss Sunshine, again, an unlikely designer coup, but believe me, we'll hear about who she's busting, to use an inappropriate verb.

Cosgrave explores the role of the stylist in the process of how each confection winds up at the big show. "Everyone wants to own a piece of that historic fashion moment," she says.

"The ruthlessness displayed at the eleventh hour," she writes in Made for Each Other, "as painstakingly handcrafted Oscar couture was dispensed like Kleenex by new-millennium Oscar nominees and their stylists, would have prompted a reprimand from a studio mogul back in the day. So would the 'tales' of 'payola' changing hands, as well as 'diva behaviour' polluting perfumed hallways inside a network of five-star Beverly Hills hotels booked solid during Oscar week by designers, fine jewellers, and deluxe-accessory labels gifting condenders and presenters with pricey accoutrements."

Cosgrave estimates that stylists review hundreds of gowns, and that actresses are presented with some four dozen for personal consideration.

One of the most difficult dress moments Cosgrave discovered involved the most difficult of celebrities, Courtney Love.

Cosgrave recounts the stress involved in Love's presentation speech at the 1997 Oscars. And she gave as much trouble to her team of dressers; at that time, unbelievable as it seems, the use of stylists was new. She employed Wendy Schecter, who wanted to channel the rock diva's early grunge satin image.

"No New York fashion PR would risk loaning expensive designer samples to Love" -- known to stage dive a the drop of a hat -- "convinced that whatever went out would never safely arrive back in one piece." In the end, the white satin Versace gown that Love wore will go down as the chicest moment of her life.

So as the clock counts down on the behind-the-scenes frenzy, we predict a very classy Oscars. "When there's so much at stake," says Cosgrave, "the answer is to keep it simple." I'm keen to see Streep in the Prada. The other devils can eat her dust.

*****

Milestone outfits

1936 Bette Davis wears what critics billed a "frumpy housedress" in a protest act against her studio.

1940 Vivian Leigh, an unknown who became Hollywood's darling as Scarlett O'Hara, chooses a bold dress by Irene with giant red poppies for her big moment.

1944 Jennifer Jones is one of the first actresses to be kitted up by a stylist. She appears dolled up in sable and diamonds by Anita Colby, who earned six figures more than 60 years ago to create appropriate images for her clientele.

1973 Diana Ross (Lady Sings the Blues) and Liza Minnelli (Cabaret) both go "elegant casual," with Ross in a sequin pantsuit by Bob Mackie and Minnelli in a yellow Halston twin-set.

Cher power She made her Bob Mackie-clad Oscar debut in 1973, but it wasn't until her wacky mohawk in 1986 (nominated for Mask), the pair's seventh collaboration, that she made her name as a showstopper.

Armani's year Jodie Foster (in a three-piece skirt suit), Michelle Pfeiffer (a sheer navy number), Jessica Lange and Julia Roberts (clingy beige slip dress, no bra) and six men all wears the designer in 1990.

1995 Uma Thurman wore a purple Prada slip dress. Its simplicity nailed the minimalist moment, and taught people outside the fashion world about the miracle from Milan. When a reporter said she didn't think Prada made eveningwear, Thurman said "They don't."

1997 Sharon Stone did the high/low combo before it was cool, pairing a Gap T-shirt with a Valentino skirt.

-- Collected from Made for Each Other (Bloomsbury USA)