FASHION / SENSE OF STYLE : Perhaps It Was Just About Time for a Stoning

I can imagine Sharon Stone, on the morning of the Academy Awards ceremony, leaning on her kitchen counter writing on a Things to Do Today pad. In a careless hand meant for her eyes only she scrawls: “Take the dog to the vet, print Quicken tax report & fax to accountant, pick up earrings at Van Cleef, clip toenails, remind the Gap to send over stretchy black mock turtleneck, mail birthday present to Mom.”

Maybe the best actress nominee’s day didn’t start out quite that way Monday, but her evening did include an appearance in a black skirt and top she identified to inquiring reporters as “from the Gap.” In a witty turnaround, the woman most responsible for resuscitating Hollywood glamour of late thumbed her nose right at it.

The Academy Awards fashion competition has acquired such a frenzied quality that it’s enough to make any woman long to reach for her sweats. It brings to mind the scene from a Woody Allen movie in which Sigmund Freud remarks, “I thought psychoanalysis was an interesting idea. I never dreamed it would become an industry.”

Even Giorgio Armani, whose elegant gowns and superb tuxedos whetted Hollywood’s appetite for designer clothes, predicted a Stone-like reversal. If interest in Oscars fashion became too acute, he reasoned, it would simply burn itself out.

Americans don’t like tie scores. It isn’t enough that the women of the movie industry look beautiful for a billion viewers. Who looks the best? Whose dress was the worst disaster? To satisfy the crowd, someone must win--and lose. (In a particularly sensitive move several years ago, the Academy changed the lines spoken by presenters, replacing “And the winner is . . .” with “The Oscar goes to . . .” That small semantic adjustment erased the implication that if one person is a winner, the others are losers.)

Quality is difficult to assess, but quantity can be scientifically measured. Therefore, Oscar-watchers conclude, the designer who dresses the most stars wins. Outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the TV crew tracking arrivals inadvertently flashed on a reporter from a rival station. “Who designed your dress?” read a placard hanging around her neck.

When that question is the first asked of someone about to be honored for artistic achievement, fashion is given more attention than it should rightfully have.

The emphasis on the designer responsible for a gown has all but eclipsed the woman wearing it, breaking a cardinal rule of style: A woman should wear a dress, not the other way around.

Stone’s List: Sharon Stone’s Oscar preparations were a bit more elaborate than our musings suggested. Before deciding Monday afternoon on the aforementioned turtleneck, Stone considered a Valentino gown that had been fitted for her and a dress specially designed and made by New York designer Vera Wang, fashion insiders say.

Stone also went so far as to have several pairs of shoes designed and manufactured by Diego Della Valle for each outfit. All that planning seems to undercut the casualness of her final choice, making it perhaps less of a statement than a move born of desperation and confusion.

Pretty Women: Not to suggest that there were hair and makeup sweepstakes to be won and lost, but both Elisabeth Shue and Winona Ryder combined natural makeup with special do’s to great effect. Shue’s locks were coiled and twisted in a modern “Sense and Sensibility” interpretation. Ryder expanded on the ‘30s mood of her Badgley Mischka gown, turning up in marcelled waves only someone as beautiful as she could carry off.