By ERIC WILSON
Published: February 25, 2008
HOLLYWOOD — The movie industry must have woken up from the writers’ strike with a rotten hangover, unable to even think about frivolous things like parties and frocks. It was such a buzz kill that quite a few of the actors on the red carpet at the Academy Awards looked as if they either couldn’t be bothered with fashion this year — so not superficial were they — or had dressed in the dark on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

The hits were few and the misses, well, seemed to be less a result of actresses who dare to risk the wrath of the fashion police (Tilda Swinton leading the charge in a shapeless black bolt of fabric that appeared to be designed by the House of Hefty) than a general sense of red carpet malaise.

“I think a lot of people are being safe,” Kimora Lee Simmons, usually a fashion extrovert, commented on the E! channel. “Safe to me reads like boring.”

Certainly the stars deserved some leeway, but you would think that after months of Hollywood gloom and doom, the fashion would have been a little more upbeat. Instead, there seemed to be only two choices — wear red and be seriously appropriate or wear black and be appropriately serious.

The first camp belonged to Katherine Heigl in an Escada one-shoulder dress, Ruby Dee in a satin belted dress and jacket by Kevan Hall, Miley Cyrus in suitably youthful Valentino and Anne Hathaway in a stunner from Marchesa with a sash of red rosettes. The serious crowd included Amy Ryan in a flat (actually navy) Calvin Klein toga and Jennifer Garner, in embroidered silk taffeta from Oscar de la Renta. Few women wore big jewels — a sign of the sober mood — except for those dressed in black, but then they had to try harder just to be noticed as present.

Nevertheless, shown against a backdrop of gray clouds, the black dresses looked so similar that it hardly seemed worth checking the labels. That wasn’t the case for two women who wore purple: Cate Blanchett looked radiant in a satin gown with a plunging neckline that was accented with green beads, matching her earrings; and Jessica Alba wore a draped Marchesa gown that was tipped with a bit of froth.

There were also some shocking moments, the kind of loopy flubs that modern advancements in the profession of fashion styling had all but done away with years ago. Ms. Swinton, bless her Dobby the House Elf-loving heart, will most likely wake up with a few bruises tomorrow for her dress (from Lanvin), and Marion Cotillard, the French (and normally chic) actress from “La Vie en Rose,” wore a mermaid gown from Jean Paul Gaultier that was unsubtly printed with fish scales. Get it?

But the biggest faux pas tended to come from the other side of the hedgerows edging the carpet, where the commentators were climbing over one another to fawn and gawk and gently probe. On ABC, George Pennacchio must have been overwhelmed by his encounter with Heidi Klum, in a red dress with a picture-frame neckline and a woodlike bun of hair on her head.

“Is it by top American designer Michael Kors?” he asked, referring to her co-host on “Project Runway.”

“It’s not,” she said with a sour face. “It’s Galliano.”

On E!, when Ryan Seacrest was not inexplicably playing with Barbies between interviews, he grilled Amy Adams, looking quite beautiful in an emerald Proenza Schouler strapless dress that set off her pale skin and red hair. He asked about the ephemeral gold mesh bag hanging from a chain interwoven between her fingers, and found it was just for show.

“It is a bag,” Ms. Adams protested. “I have invisible lipstick in there.”

But like the fashion, it was ultimately empty.

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I Have Just the Client for You

By ERIC WILSON
Published: February 24, 2008
LOS ANGELES

WINNER! Elie Saab became famous after Halle Berry wore this in 2002.
MARILYN HESTON scanned the faces in the gilded ballroom of the Beverly Wilshire for telltale signs of the Hollywood elite — that would be flashbulbs going off in your eyes — and came up empty. Oh, there were plenty of power brokers gathered on Tuesday for the Costume Designers Guild Awards, enough to double kiss all night: Jeanne Yang (stylist for Tom Cruise), Tanya Gill (stylist for Julie Christie), Arianne Phillips (stylist for Madonna and costume designer of “3:10 to Yuma”), Cameron Silver (owner of the vintage boutique Decades), etc.

But where were the real celebrities who were booked to present the awards?

A flashbulb went off in Ms. Heston’s eyes.

“There must be another cocktail hour upstairs for the V.I.P.’s!” she said, and a moment later, in her silver Rodo pumps, Nicole Miller bubble dress and a spiraling chain of Kwiat diamonds, she swished up the carpeted steps of the ballroom and hooked her arm around the sequined dress of the first woman she saw wearing a headset.

Ms. Heston, who owns a public relations company that specializes in wrangling actresses into gowns, shoes, jewels and bags for the red carpet, dropped the name of a client, Atelier Swarovski, a sponsor of the party. A moment later, she was heading up another flight of stairs with two badges marked “talent” in her hand, sweeping past a security guard and into the promised land of award presenters, inhabited by Katie Holmes, Kristen Chenoweth and Anjelica Huston. Ah, stars.

In the traditional pecking order of Hollywood, a fashion publicist would rank only a notch or two above the television commentators, makeup artists, hair stylists, tuxedo designers and spray-on-tan technicians who descend on the city during the week leading up to the Academy Awards — a mobile sales force of manicured Willy Lomans holed up in suites at the Raffles L’Ermitage. As many as 80 publicists are here representing blue chip designers, all competing for a shot to dress a Cate Blanchett or a Hilary Swank in a Valentino, Armani, Gucci or Calvin Klein dress.

Ms. Heston would probably stomp on an actress’s toes if it got her to change into shoes by Rodo, a client.

“If you don’t ask,” she said, “you don’t get.”

Aggressive, ingratiating and unencumbered by any sense that she might be pestering people, Ms. Heston, 53, has become a star maker for designers trying to break into Hollywood. That is because she does not stop asking. Marc Bouwer, who designed Angelina Jolie’s white satin Oscars gown in 2004, recalled bumping into Ms. Heston, with an armload of Elie Saab dresses at almost every turn, even after Ms. Jolie had committed to wearing his dress.

“She showed up at practically every fitting, invited or not,” he said. He recalled driving to Ms. Jolie’s house to make alterations and finding Ms. Heston’s car in the driveway. “We pulled over into the bushes until we heard she was on her way.”

Mr. Bouwer said he admired Ms. Heston, “but you do not want to play against her.”

After all, who, outside of the fashion news media, had ever heard of Elie Saab before Halle Berry turned up at the Oscars in 2002 in his deep purple tulle and taffeta gown? Or Roland Mouret before Scarlett Johansson wore his tight, curvy dresses at the Golden Globes and Oscars in 2005? The credit has gone largely to the actresses’ stylists, but Ms. Heston was there, one step deeper behind the scenes, pushing for her dresses, dying shoes to match and sewing an actress into a dress if she had to.

“Where she is brilliant is finding young designers and supporting them,” said Sienna Miller, who met Ms. Heston five years ago when she first arrived in Los Angeles and was still an unknown actress. Ms. Heston, representing M.A.C. cosmetics and Vidal Sassoon at the time, helped introduce her.

“She’s always there in a crisis,” Ms. Miller said. “It’s not that she does the styling — I’ve always dressed myself — but she’s a huge help.”

Ms. Heston’s client Nicole Miller recalled her amazement when she opened a magazine and saw her bohemian print scarf dress on Ms. Jolie when the actress made her first public appearance with Brad Pitt. “There was so much demand for that dress, we could have made another 10,000,” Ms. Miller said.

Watching Ms. Heston operate last week in the ivy-covered warehouse that serves as her showroom on Melrose Avenue, or attending a marathon of parties on Thursday night where she kiss-kissed Tilda Swinton, Michelle Trachtenberg, Donna Karan and Roberto Cavalli, was like following a chess match as she moved pieces strategically from one stylist to another. At times, it was boring. And at times it was scintillating, as when she made an especially brash play or picked up her phone, brushing aside her Vidal Sassoon blowout, to say, “Hellohoneyhowareyou. ...”

“I’ll send you JPEGs!” she yelled to Rachel Zoe (stylist to Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Garner), who had been avoiding her entreaties to see Kwiat.

“She needs a shorter heel?” she asked of Ms. Gill, who was browsing for Ms. Christie. “We can chop them off!”

“Canadian! Canadian!” she squealed to Linda Medvene (stylist for Sarah Polley, a best-director nominee for “Away from Her” and a Toronto native). “Me, too!”

Ms. Heston, originally Marilyn Grace Pernfuss in Kitchener, Ontario, has displayed a knack for handling big personalities since she was 16, working a summer job at the Vancouver Aquarium as an announcer for the dolphin and whale performances. In 1975, she landed a job managing V.I.P. cruise passengers arriving on the Island Princess (a star in “The Love Boat”).

That summer, Charlton Heston and his family disembarked and asked her to arrange their return to Los Angeles. The actor’s son, Fraser, a film director and producer, later asked her on a date and invited her to attend the Oscars when Charlton Heston was given the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1978. She arrived, in the greatest humiliation of her life, wearing a simple skirt and a blouse.

Like Scarlett O’Hara, she would never be hungry again — not on a red carpet anyway.

After marrying Fraser Heston in 1980, she worked as a film publicist (her credits include “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”), then shifted to fashion, introducing Jimmy Choo to Los Angeles. Now companies like Emanuel Ungaro, Alexander McQueen, Reem Acra and Collette Dinnigan typically pay her a $5,000 monthly retainer to lure celebrities.

Some say Ms. Heston would stop at nothing to get her labels on a hot actress, and indeed that seemed to be the case when she turned up at a studio in Culver City on Wednesday with a garment bag full of Reem Acra and Biba dresses and $50,000 worth of Kwiat diamonds stuffed in a FedEx envelope. Anna Friel, a rising young star, was being photographed by a major fashion glossy, so Ms. Heston showed up with samples.

There was an uncomfortable moment as a publicist, a photography director and the magazine’s stylist stared down Ms. Heston, delicately pointing out her diplomatic faux pas. Ms. Friel stepped in.

“Remember when I wore that spotted dress?” she said. “That was Marilyn.”

“Remember the green one? That was Marilyn.”

Ms. Heston began gathering the diamonds until the publicist stopped her.

“I want to keep them just in case,” the publicist said.

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