The Best Dress Competition : Fashion: The Academy Awards make for TV’s most glamorous night. Designers and stores want to be part of it.

SCENE 1: Rodeo Drive, 1986. An actress wanders through the Torie Steele boutiques, looking for a dress to wear to the Oscars. She admires a gown and asks a salesclerk whether the designer can make something special for her. He is delighted and sends an $8,000 dress--made to her measurements--from Europe. Meanwhile, the actress makes the same request in three other European boutiques on the street. She wears none of the four dresses on Oscar night, but keeps them all. After several trans-Atlantic shouting matches, her agent is presented with some whopping dress bills.

SCENE 2: Backstage at the Oscars, 1987. After presenting the Best Director Oscar to Oliver Stone for “Platoon,” Elizabeth Taylor heads through the barrage of cameras and reporters that all presenters and winners must face. Only Taylor isn’t in the mood to talk. In fact, she looks as if she’s going to charge right through the press gauntlet, leaving a trail of public relations people in her wake. Above the din, a reporter shouts, “Miss Taylor, who designed your dress?” Taylor stops dead in her tracks, whirls around in her hourglass dress of pink silk taffeta, smiles, and says: “Nolan Miller.” Then she sweeps past the rest of the crowd without another word.

SCENE 3: Mid-Oscar telecast, 1988. Two-time Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland is scheduled to present an award late in the show, and she’s been sitting in the audience for several hours. Moments before she is scheduled to go on, costumer Ray Aghayan sees that her beautiful red chiffon dress is terribly wrinkled. He whisks De Havilland to a wardrobe room under the football stadium-sized auditorium, where a crew works with cartoon-like speed to press the dress while she’s still in it. De Havilland, the consummate and dignified pro, is the only one in the room who’s fully composed.

Every year, Oscar lore is enriched by costume feats and fiascoes. But despite the tension, the cost, the drama, the politics and the scams, the Academy Awards make for the most glamorous night on television, and designers, costumers and stores all scramble to be part of it.

It is such a plum that designer Gianfranco Ferre, for example, while in the midst of presenting his fall ready-to-wear collection for Christian Dior in Paris, stopped everything to make two dresses for Best Actress nominee Isabelle Adjani, who is scheduled to attend Monday night’s ceremonies. One is a gold gown with embroidery; the other, a black dress with a white embroidered organza jacket.

For the second year in a row, the Giorgio Armani boutique in Beverly Hills is dressing a small army of men and women who will participate in the ceremony.

Armani himself has been quoted as saying he’s dressing Best Actress nominees Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Tandy, Jessica Lange and presenter Jodie Foster. In addition, he’s dressing Best Supporting Actress nominee Julia Roberts. But Armani and his staff are characteristically mum about the specifics, saying actresses often change their minds at the last minute. Indeed, Lange has arranged to view dresses from Fred Hayman Beverly Hills on Monday morning.

(It is ironic that Armani would be the front-runner in the Oscar fashion race because the Milanese designer is not known for his women’s evening wear, but, rather, his clean, spare and neutral-colored daytime clothes.)

Fred Hayman, a store that is in the midst of a nationwide perfume launch, has taken on the task of being the official fashion coordinator to the show for the second year. The store doesn’t receive a fee, and Hayman does not believe that the cash registers will ring more frequently after the two-second credit flashes before the show’s 1 billion viewers. “The residual effect is primarily image,” he says.

In general, stores call a nominated actress to ask whether she would like to buy or borrow a dress only if she is already a customer. But that tradition is starting to change. Hayman’s store and the Armani boutique were the first retailers to jump in with both feet. Others, like Amen Wardy, are ready to try their luck. “I have a list of (nominees’) names and I’m going to call them,” says Wardy, who could pick up some of the notoriously last-minute Oscar business.

In some instances, actresses will call up their favorite designers for advice. When Glenn Close agreed to be a presenter this year, she called Geoffrey Beene and they came up with a design for an outfit. Close was also savvy enough to check in with the Academy Awards producer, Gilbert Cates, to ask him about all the elements that might affect her wardrobe choice. “Glenn Close is hosting the London portion of the show at the Ritz and she and I had a long conversation,” says Cates. “She asked all the right questions, like, ‘Do I make an entrance?’ and ‘Are the shots head to toe?’ We don’t give actresses guidelines about what to wear, but we will discuss everything with them.”

Close will appear in a high-neck, long-sleeved black dress that Beene says was inspired not only by her needs but also by Close’s next role as Queen Gertrude in Franco Zeffirelli’s “Hamlet,” which begins filming soon in London.

In other cases, an actress might pick up a dress right out of a designer’s private sample closet. Best Supporting Actress nominee Dianne Wiest went to Carolyne Roehm’s New York design studio and fell in love with a long navy sheath. (The wool crepe dress has white georgette sleeves with a diamond spray design.)

Typically, when an actress picks a sample, she usually just borrows the dress for the night. Donna Karan spokeswoman Christy Hood says Karan doesn’t mind if actresses tuck, hem or do minor alterations on borrowed goods, but “cutting off a dress wouldn’t be allowed.” Hood sent two samples to Karan devotee and Oscar presenter Candice Bergen: a pink beaded dress and a gold Fortuny-pleated silk organza tunic and skirt.

At Carolyne Roehm, public relations director Lisa Schiek says dresses are loaned and returned. “We never say, ‘Keep it.’ The dresses are too expensive.”

Schiek has called a nominee when she felt a particular dress would be perfect for her, “but it’s not the norm,” she says. “They usually call us and it’s not unusual to get a call at the last minute.”

The jewelry firm Harry Winston, whose relationship with Hollywood stars dates to the days of Marilyn Monroe singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” is also very liberal with Oscar night loans and will call stars to see whether they need anything. Actresses who have accepted the offer this year include Close, Wiest and presenter Geena Davis.

Solicited and unsolicited goods can pile up, as some actresses find. In 1988, Best Supporting Actress nominee Anne Archer received four boxes of gowns, only one of which was actually requested. She ended up sending everything back and paying full price for a Vicky Tiel dress at Maxfield.

Stores like Maxfield and Amen Wardy insist that actresses buy, not borrow. The Armani boutique loans clothes, but only from a special sample line, which is later returned to the designer and never sold.

In the case of individual designers, Europeans will loan and give clothes, while Americans tend to loan or sell.

“Valentino and lots of other European designers want American celebrities in their front rows at fashion shows and they want them wearing their clothes. They consider it a coup,” says Valentino boutique manager Tom Bruno. “They love the Oscars because they’re shown around the world and it’s good publicity. American designers are more interested in the socialites like Pat Buckley and Nan Kempner wearing their clothes.”

Ray Aghayan, this year’s Oscar telecast costume designer, says neither he nor longtime business associate Bob Mackie give dresses outright to actresses.

Mackie customer Cher is very particular about her clothing arrangements with the designer and even with the briefest of outfits, will pick up the tab, says Aghayan. “She’s very meticulous about that.”

Actors and actresses who perform on the show are clothed at the Academy’s cost. Aghayan says there is no huge opening number Monday night, and that the musical numbers on the show will have “a quiet elegance, as opposed to last year.” His dress for Diana Ross, who is singing on the telecast, is a long, bias-cut column of white crepe. He collaborated with the singer on details such as the neckline, the train and embroidery.

For those presenters and nominees who borrow dresses from Fred Hayman’s store, the arrangements are more complicated. As official Oscar fashion coordinator, the store’s staff wrote to numerous designers asking them to ship over dresses to be loaned out. Hayman says he weeded out things that he considered too simple or not glamorous enough, then wrote to all the actresses who are nominated or presenting awards and invited them in.

Daryl Hannah, an Academy Award presenter, took advantage of the Fred Hayman Oscar closet and selected a white, sequined, tea-length Vicky Tiel dress with a satin bow placed strategically on her derriere.

Because this year’s crop of actresses is spread out all over the globe, Fred Hayman’s task of reaching everyone was difficult. Polaroid photographs had to be sent out to Best Actress nominee Pauline Collins because she wasn’t due to arrive in Los Angeles until the last moment. (Collins, like Lange, is scheduled to view dresses from Fred Hayman on Monday morning.) A van of dresses went out to presenter Melanie Griffith on the set of her movie “Pacific Heights.” Between takes she tried on clothes and narrowed them down to a black Vicky Tiel gown with lace trim and an orange silk sheath with a matching beaded jacket by Eva Chun.

If an actress finds a dress in Hayman’s stock, she would be allowed to borrow it and return it clean and undamaged. She signs a letter of indemnification that says she’s responsible for the cost if it’s soiled, lost, stolen or not returned.

Some of the Oscar attendees are still wavering about what to wear. Anjelica Huston has picked out two dresses: a floor-length Bob Mackie frock, covered in sequins and bugle beads from Fred Hayman and a short, sleeveless, python printed silk dress by Eva Chun (a California-based designer) that she purchased from I. Magnin.

Uncommitted dressers were still combing the racks last week. At mid-week Jane Fonda was seriously considering something from the Versace couture collection on Rodeo Drive but hadn’t made her final choice.