Style through the ages

NO offence to the Academy, but most viewers won’t be watching tomorrow night to see who its little gold men go home with.

We want to know who’s wearing what and whether she wears it well.

The statues are but accessories to the couture gowns that actresses begin fittings for at the merest hint of a nomination. Some of the biggest winners won’t be boring us with speeches, either.

A designer who gets his or her dress on an A-list attendee can expect millions of dollars worth of publicity off her back. Valentino, who dressed Best Actress winner Julia Roberts in 2005, estimates that the exposure was equivalent to $25m (€19m) spent on advertising.

For the stylist who gets it right, red carpet images of their work can attract more famous clients or make them celebrities in their own right, á la Rachel Zoe and Patricia Field. Haute couture, like so many Hollywood films, is sold on a fantasy for outrageous sums. When their stars mix, they make some beautiful fashion magic.

Grace Kelly was famously a creature of habit about her clothes and turned to her friend and costume designer Edith Head to make this gown, left, for the 27th Academy Awards.

They’d become friendly while working on Rear Window and also collaborated on Country Girl, the musical that won Kelly this Oscar. The ice-blue silk was chosen to match her eyes. At $42,000, the fabric alone was thought wildly decadent, making her the most expensively-dressed Best Actress ever at that time. This dress reflects Alfred Hitchcock’s blonde ideal, the look he instructed Head to create for Rear Window. “He said “make her look like a princess” Head wrote in her memoirs. “Like a piece of Dresden china.”

Elizabeth Taylor was 5’ 2” and curvier than many of her contemporaries, including Grace Kelly (a 1950s size 10 with a 24-inch waist). Her MGM costumer and confidant Helen Rose was a master of proportion and helped her transition from child star to style icon. Clever cuts and accessories, together with her fine-boned face and violet eyes, created an image of physical perfection. The Dior ensemble she wore to collect her award for Butterfield 8 in 1961 is a perfect example. The full white skirt was cinched with a red rose-detailed belt for an hourglass silhouette. Her corseted, sleeveless yellow top highlighted her slender arms and a large bouffant and heels gave her height.

Ever gamine, ever gorgeous, Audrey Hepburn created a new kind of movie-star glamour: minimalist chic. Famed couturier Hubert de Givenchy (whom she favoured over studio-hired costumers) provided the clothes. The 1954 Oscars, at which she took Best Actress for Roman Holiday, was the first time he dressed her for an event. This simple, belted white lace dress is unique among the gowns on this list as it would work now as a day-dress. The look could be criticised as lack-lustre but, as Capote wrote of Holly Golightly, “there is a consequential good taste in the plainness of her clothes… that lack of lustre that makes her, herself, shine so”.

Susan Sarandon’s fashion history is a series of extremes, veering from baggy men’s suits to eye-offending floral kaftans. She styles herself and thumbs her nose at formal dress codes with kooky red-carpet accessories. Her disregard for convention meant she was happy to give Dolce and Gabbana their first Oscar moment in 1996. The designers adored the copper highlights Sarandon had put in after Dead Man Walking wrapped and used the colour as a starting point. Forgoing their signature corset-and-lace designs, they put a simple, halter-necked bodice on a full crinoline skirt. Never has a 19th century-inspired dress looked so wonderfully modern.

Gwyneth Paltrow’s pink taffeta Ralph Lauren gown was an unlikely hit in 1999. She rejected the help of a stylist for the event and the bust drooped for want of a tuck and pin. The cut and colour were twee. Ralph Lauren doesn’t really do red-carpet glamour and the design was a little too plain for a Best Actress nominee. Then she won for Shakespeare in Love and made a moving tearjerker of a speech. Her words melted the frozen, famished hearts of fashion critics everywhere. Pink dresses were suddenly the party look of the year. In 2002, Vogue’s Plum Sykes wrote that this was the night Paltrow became “known less as an innovator than for her knack of picking a hit look that captures the world’s imagination as it never did before Gwyneth wore it.”

Renee Zellweger’s breakout roll was “completing” Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire. In 2001, this Jean Desses column was her breakout dress. “She had a terrible, horrible fashion history,” says Rita Watnick, quoted in Bronwyn Cosgrave’s Made for Each Other: Fashion and the Academy Awards. “Very contrived, very trying hard.” Ms Watnick founded LA vintage-couture boutique Lily et Cie in 1978 and is known for her flawless taste and Oscar-winning clientele. Watnick didn’t recognise Zellweger when they met but she knew how to dress her. This gown took five fittings and 52 hours of restoration to perfect, at a cost of $14,000. Renee went on to top the Best-Dressed lists and form a mutually beneficial relationship with Venezuelan designer Carolina Herrera.

Valentino has been an Oscar favourite since the 1960s, when the brand’s founder was strongly influenced by Elizabeth Taylor (she grew fond of him while filming in Rome, nicknaming him “Rudy” after Rudolph Valentino). When he retired in 2008, he told The Daily Telegraph that seeing Julia Roberts in his design at the 2001 Oscars was the highlight of his career. The corseted bodice and white-piping were inspired by 1940s Hollywood, the era that made him want to design. Roberts’ piled her hair high on her crown to display white piping that ran from the nape of her neck to the hem.

Rare is premiere without an actress in Elie Saab these days but Halle Berry put him on the map in 2002. The Lebanese designer couldn’t have asked for a more perfect endorsement, especially when she picked up the Best Actress Award for Monster’s Ball. The semi-sheer top showed off her flawless figure and burgundy was a refreshing choice for a spring event. A year later, Saab was invited to join the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture (the Parisian regulator that determines which fashion houses may trade as haute couture houses). His show is now one of the most hotly anticipated on the Paris Fashion Week schedule.

Penelope Cruz wore Atelier Versace and made an extravagant statement on the 2007 red carpet. The brand’s jaw-dropping red carpet designs include Elizabeth Hurley’s safety-pin dress and Jennifer Lopez’s open-front “jungle” dress. Penelope’s pale pink gown didn’t need to flash any flesh for to get the world’s attention. The sea of hand-dyed ostrich plumes was dramatic enough. Nominated for Volver, she lost the Best Actress Award to Helen Mirren but still won Best Dressed.

Zoe Saldana’s Givenchy couture gown divided fashion critics in 2010. The frothy, purple-hued train was pure couture and an elaborate choice for such a young star. This was her first Oscars and though she didn’t win, she definitely set the tone for what’s been an amazing run of red carpet looks since. Her stylist Petra Flannery told The Hollywood Reporter that the perfect Oscar dress “mixes high fashion with what’s appropriate for the event to create a sophisticated but larger-than-life look”. Flannery had a lightning-bolt moment when she saw this dress at the Givenchy Spring show. “It was the perfect dress for her on the runway and in person.”

The fashion, the glamour, the glitz, the predictions and your comments — we’ll have it all in our live red-carpet Oscars blog from 10pm Sunday evening.

We’ll bring you video clips and pictures of the stars as they arrive for this year’s Oscars ceremony on Sunday evening.

Fashion writer Rachel Marie Walsh will detail the fashion hits and misses and Irish Examiner movie critic Declan Burke will share his predictions on the winners and losers.

* See you there from 10pm this Sunday — www.irishexaminer.com