Oscar Who?

With two days to go before the Academy Awards, the activity at the normally staid L’Ermitage Hotel in Beverly Hills is frenetic. Assistants for designers Donna Karan, Pamela Dennis and Halston’s Kevan Hall are bumping into each other in the hallways with seamstresses in tow as they make their way in and out of suites.

If they need shoes, there’s Jimmy Choo, who’s offering diamond-studded spikes; for watches, the Movado Group; and accessories, J.P. Tod. No detail is overlooked. Other designers are flying in from New York, indeed from around the world, to set up shop at other Beverly Hills hotels.

They are all here for one reason: to dress the stars for the 71st Academy Awards.

Oscar night has become the world’s most-watched fashion show as designers compete to dress celebrities. “Fashions,” said Gil Cates, longtime producer of the Academy Awards, “are almost as big as the show itself.”

Who will wear what is perhaps the best kept secret in town. This is one of the few times designers and publicists cannot be cajoled into going off the record. “How can I trust you?” they ask. And they can’t. Finding out what best actress nominee Gwyneth Paltrow (the bod to dress this year) will wear is just too juicy to keep secret.

Typically the designers themselves are kept in the dark. Many will have to watch the awards to see whether a client actually selects their garment to wear in the final hours before the ceremony.

The fashion free-for-all began the moment the Oscar nominations were announced. Designers blitzed the nominees with faxes, phones calls and special gifts. Within a couple of weeks, they came from New York, France, Italy and Germany to stage special showings of their evening wear collections. Couture gowns were shipped to prospects, assistants dispatched with matching shoes and purses, clients taken to lunch and dinner.

A designer who makes a successful connection with Hollywood can become the buzz of the fashion world. One year later, people are still talking about Minnie Driver’s red Oscar gown from Randolph Duke for Halston. “I don’t think I could have bought that kind of exposure,” said Duke, who left Halston shortly afterward to start his own collection.

Giorgio Armani was the first designer to understand that a celebrity clientele is good for both star and designer. In 1988, he opened a West Coast store, complete with a publicity department. The next year, he dressed Michelle Pfeiffer for the Academy Awards. She, along with Jodie Foster, are now considered two of Hollywood’s more stylish dressers, and they continue to wear his clothes. Today the Armani suit is now the uniform of Hollywood’s power brokers.

One thing hasn’t changed: In the 1950s, a woman might have sat with a fan magazine, staring at Elizabeth Taylor in an Edith Head gown. Today, her daughter pores over any number of fashion magazines that are ostensibly more high-brow, but she is seeing the same thing: the stars of her era dressed in fabulous designs. And with today’s technology such images can be transmitted around the world in seconds. An estimated 45 million people are expected to tune in to Sunday’s Oscar broadcast.

Stars Must Protect

Their Images

Like all contests, the race to Oscar dressing does have its rules, a pecking order to selecting garments--nominees first, presenters next, wives of nominees and presenters, an occasional star with staying power, and so on.

The No. 1 rule for a movie star is to protect her image. A star is a star for as long as people believe her image. Blow that image and people stop believing in you.

“It’s really about what is the image of the actress, how does she want to be seen?” said New York designer Anne Bowen. “How does she want to position herself to the world?”

Paltrow is already a fashion icon. Fellow nominee Cate Blanchett is a close second. Fashion houses from all over the world are courting both women as well as other high-profile celebrities.

Star style often comes from a battery of people rather than the star herself--a designer or two, a hairdresser, even a makeup person and a stylist who pulls it all together. Stylists are gaining more and more power in the Oscar derby.

They are the matchmakers who help the celebrities find the perfect dress, shoes, accessories, undergarments and the right hairdo and makeup for that memorable look that will make cameras flash in a blinding light.

Jessica Pastor, one of the town’s leading stylists, visited with Duke two weeks ago to review his collection for her clients, who include Cate Blanchett, Minnie Driver and Kim Basinger. They disappeared into another room to talk privately.

“I love Randy,” said Pastor. “And Randy’s going to get one of my good girls.” Duke was one of several designers Pastor was visiting. After the nominations, she received offers from virtually every design house in the world to dress Blanchett, considered the only nominee to perhaps beat Paltrow as best actress.

Hollywood stylist Phillip Bloch has been bombarded with faxes for the last month, begging him to use products on his clients for Academy Awards night.

“Everybody from jewelry designers to bag designers to bra designers to shoe designers,” he said. And this year he is only dressing Jim Carrey--in a Donna Karan tuxedo. Even Bloch himself has been courted--to wear diamond cuff links while he does fashion commentary for CNN on Oscar night.

Most of his regular clients--Salma Hayek, Sandra Bullock and Lauren Holly--are staying home. The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion is a small venue, and if you’re not a presenter or nominee, it’s probably not worth going, he says.

“I get really repulsed when I get designers calling, ‘Can you get somebody to wear my dress?’ ” Bloch said. “The designer should already have a relationship with the star.”

Celeb and Designer

Build a Relationship

In the beginning there were always relationships. If a movie star needed a gown, her studio would send her to a costume designer like Edith Head or Rene Hubert who clothed her both in the movies and in her life--premieres, charity balls and Oscar night.

The studios fell apart and stars were left to dress themselves--a field day for fashion critics. Sally Field accepted her 1979 best actress award in a simple, short Bob Mackie suit. Who can forget the casual ruffles of the 1970s and early ‘80s?

Today, any nominee not swathed in an Armani or Valentino needs a new agent. But most stars have built relationships already with designers.

“Gwyneth has a relationship with Calvin [Klein]. Sharon Stone and Vera Wang are tight,” said Duke. Stone, who remains one of the darlings to dress, has shown up in Valentino and Armani, but more and more, she wears only Wang to the big events, including her wedding last year.

Duke returned to Beverly Hills on Thursday and commandeered a suite at the Avalon Hotel to take care of the final details of dressing his unnamed stars. (He won’t even say how many.) “I want the best dress on the best girl in the best possible way.” Celebrities are important to Duke because they are among the small group who can afford his gowns.

He likes the Oscar competition because, “in the end, there is a kind of sweet justice in that the best dress wins.”

With the right Hollywood splash, a designer will enter the public’s consciousness, making it easier to sell more accessible--and affordable--lines such as sportswear, home furnishings, shoes or eyeglasses to the masses. Tommy Hilfiger, for example, deliberately dressed male celebrities for awards shows. His payoff is an enormously successful sportswear line.

This Oscar Race Has

Its Costly Risks

The promise of Oscar dressing has its risks: cost and utter disappointment. Many of the gowns are specially made, one-of-a-kind, very expensive couture. For the Oscars, the stars typically are allowed to keep the gowns they wear. Actresses often cannot afford to be photographed in the same dress twice, so many return their dresses after the event. But some actresses keep the clothing even if they do not wear the outfit. In such cases, a designer loses a dress--and publicity.

Still, some designers, like Elizabeth Galindo, are undeterred. “She has a buzz going right now among the stylists,” explained Kathryn Vanderveen, who places products, especially luxury items, in movies.

The Sacramento-based designer, who has two big celebrity clients--Sophia Loren and Melanie Griffith--showed her clothes in Beverly Hills recently. But her hopes were soon dashed afterward.

Loren, who is an Oscar presenter this year, will wear Armani--a remarkable admission. It came down to the Italian giant and the Sacramento newcomer. Loren, in a rare courtesy, phoned Galindo to tell her she was wearing Armani instead. “I was in tears,” said Galindo, who is determined to have her dress on the red carpet in two years.

Any designer’s assistant can tell you, sotto voce, about a star who, at the last minute, on the comment of a best friend or housekeeper, changed her dress. No matter that a tailor had stayed up the night before sewing on specially ordered beads. No matter that a small, or large, house had spent thousands on the gown.

“I’m friends with a lot of designers,” said New York designer Anne Bowen. “I’ve gotten a lot of midnight phone calls, ‘Oh my God, she didn’t wear it.’ ”