Ladies in Exile: GOOP: The Hunt for the Perfect Academy Award Attire

In her serving of GOOP from the week of March 22nd, Gwyneth Paltrow generously offers an insight into the grand and complicated process of selecting a dress and of embarking on her final preparations for the Academy Awards back on February 26th.

THIS year she chose a white dress with cape by the designer Tom Ford, and it was surprisingly flattering and unusual and to my recollection well-received by armchair and proper critics. (It also appeared, in near-identical form, in the designer's Fall-Winter 2012 collection.)

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Illustration: Irises, by Vincent van Gogh (Rijksmuseum)
via Wikimedia Commons
[BEFORE she decided on her final ensemble on the day of the Oscars, Paltrow tried out a cuff by Anna Hu "inspired by Van Gogh's painting, Irises, and [. . .] made up of garnets, emeralds, sapphires and diamonds in the same colors as those of the painting." This could in fact refer to any of several still-lives of irises by van Gogh. (Another, 'orchid' cuff "was inspired by Monet's color palette and designed while listening to Chopin.")]

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The hunt for an Oscars dress can begin as soon as the nominations are announced. In Gwyneth Paltrow's case, stylist Elizabeth Saltzman did much of the hunting, which is described in a question-and-answer exchange:

First I call certain designers ["no more than four"] that I know I'd like to work with for the event [. . .] I ask [. . .] If they are dressing anyone else. If so, what color and style are the other people's dresses?, etc.

The sketches which the designers send her in return are 'gently' altered to suit the stylist while maintaining a consensus. The negotiations are handled through "lots of long-distance phone calls, discussions, FedEx's," "Skype, email, and photos," and, ideally, a visit to see the dress 'in the flesh,' often at nighttime where there are fewer things going on.

I generally work with two or three designers from the beginning until there’s a finished dress to try.

The 'politics' of favouring a single designer can be fraught, since if all goes well a dress and the house which produced it will be given friendly coverage across the worldwide press. But, Saltzman writes, "The advantage I have is that I'm not new in the industry and I've built relationships that are not about screwing anyone else over. It's about being honest with the designers and the other people involved, listening to what they're hoping for, [. . .]"

For Paltrow's Oscar dress, though, she quickly settled for one designer, and met him "at his studio about a week before the event." Once the dress is found and made, it is fitted.

SALTZMAN greenlit the final design for its

supreme elegance, grace, royalty, extreme modern luxury, simplicity without lacking intense skill and risk. It had a positive edginess to it as well.

Speaking with the added authority of her years as a contributing editor to Vogue, and as a fashion editor and now international social editor at Vanity Fair, she stresses in general that the prettiness of a dress is less important than the woman who is wearing it. "You have to think about the person, their body, their confidence, their coloring, their wishes, their needs and what will be successful for them."

In the vein of this philosophy, she advises any woman buying a dress to