Google Me: Movies? Oh no, it's the dresses

What else would a girl have on her mind in Oscar week but what to wear? JULIE MIDDLETON taps 'Oscar frocks' into Google.


Let's get this straight. The Oscars might have been a coup for Peter Jackson, but all we really wanted to see were the women's dresses.

Media and internet discussion of the frocks worn every year is a small industry in itself.

"They've become as important to the public as who wins the Oscars," says Fred Hayman, Oscar's longtime and now retired official fashion co-ordinator, on www.canoe.ca:

From the time Oscar nominees are announced, fashion designers begin tripping over each other for exposure, Hayman says.

"United States and European designers are fighting to have stars wear their clothes, frantically flooding nominees with faxed sketches and flying in drop-dead couture gowns for them to try on. So heady and exciting for the actresses!"

And possibly socially eviscerating.

Marcelle d'Argy Smith, the social x-ray former editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, asked the hard questions on news.bbc.co.uk: "Who'd look breathtaking? Whose outfit would make us groan? How much flesh would be exposed? Would any female lead who isn't a size two be allowed into the theatre?"

(The answer to the last one was, apparently, yes, but not in the front row.)

"This," she opined, "was the year of so many elegant, ladylike, feminine dresses that cleavage is beginning to look coarse. The big story is satin."

But the online version of the USA Today newspaper reckoned that the fashions sashaying down Oscar's red carpet were as predictable and safe as the awards (presumably he's talking about The Lord of the Rings' 11 out of 11).

People on the Google newsgroup nz.general were more colourful.

One wrote: "Has anyone seen pics of all the frocks? There were only two or three that could, in any way, be described as tasteful. And as for Uma Thurman, what on earth was she thinking?

"As we were seeing pics coming through today I put forward the proposition that money and taste were obviously inversely related. After much discussion, we agreed the evidence was strong."

Some made impressions so strong they can never be forgotten. Remember and cringe, says www.twincities.com, "poor Celine Dion, who is probably still haunted - and taunted - by the backward white coat and fedora by John Galliano for Christian Dior that she wore on the red carpet in 1999".

But the guys, safely wrapped in same-old, same-old black tuxedos, don't escape from the frock knockers.

One alt.showbiz.gossip posting reads: "Peter Jackson, god bless him, needs to brush his hair, get dress clothes specifically tailored for a big man, and tell his wife that the 'scattered mental patient' look doesn't work well at formal events."