Rage Against the Fashion Machine

When Cher, the longtime Oscar fashion provocateur, showed up at last year’s Academy Awards not in a body-baring, beaded and rhinestoned costume by Bob Mackie, but in one of his simplest long gowns, Hollywood fashion seemed to have caved in to mainstream taste. Amid the tedium of other elegantly attired and perfectly coiffed stars, the paparazzi cheered only when Angelina Jolie appeared as a slinky-spooky imitation of Morticia Addams.

With pressure on to look perfect, many stars succumb to a Hollywood fashion machine built on borrowed designer frocks, generous gifts and a fleet of professional style facilitators. Behind that glamorous facade, however, there’s a backlash building against an image-making system that can overpower personal style.

“Everything has been overly choreographed,” said Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys New York and a New York Observer columnist. “I’m dying for someone to fall over, throw up or have some sort of mishap because the element of surprise and spontaneity has gone out of it.” With all the freebies dished out by companies seeking the endorsement of Hollywood glamour, he said, “you might as well have a sandwich board on.”

This year, many stars are shedding fashion stylists, taking back control and dressing themselves. Big-name designers are targeting stars directly but offering fewer free dresses. And some lesser-known designers are dropping out of the expensive Oscars dress race because of few returns on their investment.

Listen to all the grousing, and the hardest hits are aimed at the stylists, the “exterior decorators,” who toil in the shadows to select star wardrobes. At a news conference in Milan, Italy, a few weeks ago, Gucci designer Tom Ford said what no one had dared to say publicly: “I am sick of the stylists.” Their prettifying efforts, he said, made the stars “look like they’re doing a guest spot on ‘Friends.’ ”

Many with a stake in the Oscar dress derby confessed privately they were glad Ford spoke up--except, of course, the stylists. With her long track record at the Oscars, stylist Jessica Paster said Ford needs to watch out for glass houses. “My motive is to put the best dress on the actor. The designer’s motive is to put his dress on the actor,” she said. “That’s a big difference.”

Paster, who despite the slight is looking at Gucci gowns for her Oscar clients Joan Allen and Marcia Gay Harden, also criticized her less experienced peers. “Every day there is a new crop of people saying, ‘I’m going to be a stylist,’ and they don’t know the protocol. They say they’ll work for Julia Roberts for free,” she said of this year’s most sought-after nominee. “That works with some publicists and actors out of greed.” Although some actors may be comfortable selecting their own clothes, Paster said, “a lot of people are probably not using stylists because they are cheap.”

The entertainment industry has a conflicted history with stylists, who earn a top daily rate of $1,500, less than comparable hair and makeup artists. “We are the most hard-working, underpaid people in the beauty world,” said Paster, who commands fees above the standard rate. “We have to fight with actors and studios to pay us.”

Curiously, stylists and their clients now combat the oddly shameful notion that only the style-impaired require assistance. “There is this attitude that says if you have a stylist you don’t have personal style,” said veteran Oscar stylist Phillip Bloch, who has become a celebrity fashion commentator. “I think that’s [bull]. These girls are busy. They don’t have the time. My whole existence is fashion.” But he does concede that fewer celebrities are using stylists this year.

Bloch won’t name his current Oscar clients because he said he signed confidentiality agreements this year for the first time. “They don’t want it known that a stylist dressed them,” he said. He’s being paid more than usual for his efforts, noting that his penalty for blabbing is “more than if I kept my mouth shut.” Bloch said that he’s seen other penalties hit $25,000 and that his is in that range.

A few designers, afraid of retribution, won’t name the stylists but acknowledged that some demand expensive trips to see fashion shows in New York, Paris and Milan, and rack up costly hotel bills, paid by designers. Still many see stylists and the expensive favors as just part of doing business.

Some stars simply don’t like the associations with stylists. “I don’t think some of these people are looking out for what is really good for the actors and actresses,” said Jane Seymour, who has long selected her own wardrobe. “I think it’s about what is suiting their deals that they have going. I’m not into that. I decided to take it out of their hands and do it myself,” said Seymour, who frequently works directly with the German firm Escada and has won fashion awards.

For her four Oscar appearances, fellow Escada fan Angela Bassett also prefers to work solo. “I know what I feel most comfortable in,” said Bassett, who said she enjoys the shopping process. “I have an aversion to hearing, ‘You have to wear this, and you have to wear what’s hot.’ ”

Seymour, who sometimes wears her own stunning jewels, may not win friends among stylists, but she said selecting her own look helps her connect with her fans. The awards shows “celebrate the fact that the public respects what I do, and the choices I make, and this [her clothing] is another choice I make,” she said.

Other stars at last month’s Golden Globe Awards also managed their own looks. Sandra Bullock and Paster client Hilary Swank announced that they selected their own dresses, while trendsetter Rita Wilson plucked her unusual Josephus Thimister ball gown from her own closet. (Swank still called Paster in a panic to get alterations, Paster said.) Jamie Lee Curtis tried wresting red-carpet conversation away from fashion toward the significance of the awards when, instead of discussing her look, she simply handed reporters a card that listed her fashion contributors.

In some ways, stylists are simply victims of their own success. Once considered a sort of status symbol in celebrities’ fleet of professional managers, they are lately being usurped by publicists, and more commonly, the designers themselves. For a good portion of the 1990s, the Oscar red carpet looked like a Giorgio Armani fashion show as the Italian designer successfully wooed men and women stars with his coolly elegant clothes and gracious entertaining. At last year’s ceremony, Samuel Jackson’s vivid purple Armani suit, with its knee-length coat, made him the evening’s most memorable male star.

“I don’t want to look like another penguin out there,” he said. “I try to do something special because I want to feel like I’m in Hollywood.” Jackson, who will be a presenter this year, is returning to Armani for something unusual, “but not off the chart.”

To nurture loyalty like Jackson’s, other big-name designers such as Gucci, Versace, Chanel and Valentino frequently enlist top-level employees to directly--and privately--court high-profile celebrities with gifts, trips or merchandise. In the last two years, the star courting has become a crass carnival of companies brazenly seeking publicity. At the Beverly Hills hotel L’Ermitage this week, the concierge even has a guide to the dozens of temporary showrooms offering Oscar goods.

With all the competition, many fashion companies are stemming the tide of free clothes and accessories that used to wash over nominees. As it attempts to make a comeback, luxury bag maker Judith Leiber is very selective about who can keep those bags, which cost up to $3,000.

“If you are someone fabulous, and you are photographed and you want to keep your bag,” said Lisa Wells, Leiber’s spokeswoman, “then you can keep it. That’s my unofficial policy.” She has turned down some celebrities’ requests to keep their loaners because they weren’t famous enough to do the brand much good.

The high stakes of Oscar fashion have pushed away less well-funded competitors. Deep-pocketed European designers can offer couture dresses and prestigious seats at their shows for Hollywood figures, but smaller companies can’t. That’s partly why Nicole Miller quit making up a special set of dresses to circulate among Oscar stylists and publicists, said company chief executive Bud Konheim.

“We’re out of the lending business because it isn’t a business,” Konheim said. “It’s an ego trip. Everyone knows that our dresses are $800 or $1,000, and that’s not hefty enough to compete.” He and others have found that dressing celebrities doesn’t add to the bottom line. The only people making money are the likes of A.B.S. designer Allen B. Schwartz, who sold 10,000 lower-priced interpretations of Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow’s pink Ralph Lauren dress two years ago.

“People think that dressing a celebrity is like money in the bank,” said Frederick Anderson, president of Douglas Hannant, a New York evening-wear maker. “But a lot of people who were big in dressing celebrities didn’t check at retail.” Hannant and Anderson came to L.A. last year to try attracting top names to their label but found the experience unsettling.

“It sometimes feels,” said Anderson, “like prostituting yourself when you’re out there in a hotel room.”