Oscars

I was going to suggest that Paulina Rubio accidentally donned this dress backwards, but then I realized it wouldn't make a difference: it's hideous either way. It's drawstring bag/grieving clown couture with an element of "I left the iron on and it burned a hole in the garment." And... is that a luggage tag hanging around her neck? Please, somebody, pick her up and ship her back to the "If found, please return to" address.

Bai Ling Personality No. 8: jellyfish.

That, or she is SERIOUSLY bloated.

There are so many ways to go with this photograph of Paris Hilton.

1) Well, at least it's not the kind of cock you expect Paris to drag around with her...

2) Never before has hunting seemed so appealing. Indeed, somewhere in America, Nicole Richie is suiting up in her best bright orange and borrowing a rifle (and, most likely, hiring someone to help her lift it to shoulder-height).

3) Oh, honey, we've already seen your plumage.

4) How unfair that a peacock had to go naked so that Paris Hilton, of all people, could get dressed.

5) We would suspect this is her attempt at playing off of Jon Stewart's "Dick Cheney/Bjork and the swan dress" joke, if we thought she had any idea who Dick Cheney is. Or, indeed, who Jon Stewart is. (They're not Greek enough to make her radar.)

Regardless of which path is the one you think leads to enlightenment, one thing is certainly universally true: She looks more like an aging drag queen than ever.

You know, with Lil' Kim behind bars and unable to fulfill her duties as our nation's captain of decorum, it's thrilling to see first runner-up Pamela Anderson stepping in so assiduously:

Lovely boob tape, dear -- must be industrial strength. But you might want to put the dogs away for a little while. Nobody likes a yappy pup who won't stop making noise and is constantly jumping up and trying to eat your pantleg.

The acting Dread Pirate Parton, who manages to rein hers in so admirably these days (two Oscar outfits, zero embarrassing decolletage), would be beyond horrified.

It's not a good sign that the first thing that popped into my head when I saw this picture -- well, after I wondered why Haylie Duff decided to go matriarch-chic here and break into Kathy Hilton's wardrobe -- was, "You know, I really do want to see Transamerica."

Ugh. Icky, puckered Lizzie Grubman and her icky, puckered black trim that looks stapled onto the dress as part of some community-service "Gee, sorry I ran over you with my SUV, but I was really tired that night from all the drinking... of WATER... that I was doing" state-mandated craft project sponsored by K-Mart.

Why do people encourage her to leave the house? I can't wait until her overtanned hide turns to chapped leather in about ten years.

I love pockets. I use mine all the time. Much as I am hooked on cute purses, sometimes it's just easier to jam some cash and an ID into your trousers and not have to worry about, say, leaving your purse in the car, or under your dinner table, or the windowsill at Union Station during a fairly high-traffic time of day. Not that any of these things has happened to me.

However, there's a reason evening gowns don't have pockets. Two reasons, actually.

1. Sandra Bullock.

2. Amy Adams

Look at them: Amy and her pretty hair, her pretty smile, and her pretty eyes, and that bizarre breastplate thing on the front of her dress; and Sandy, whose gown has that strange black-mesh stuff that looks like lining gone badly awry, but who has grown into her face with age and looks a lot better now that her tattooed biker husband is making her love herself enough to eat (take notice, starlets). In short, these women, depsite some torso-related dress-design oddities, are lovely.

And yet, they are unable to resist the temptation of the pocket, so they're standing there with their hands jammed into their skirts. It looks ridiculous. It's the sartorial equivalent of smacking one's chewing gum, which makes even the most sophisticated Wrigley addict look like a cow chewing cud. So stop cudding yourselves, ladies, and resist the allure of the headline-grabbing gown pocket that will, in the end, grab you in its awkward clutches.

Hilary Swank at the 2006 SAG Awards:

Marley Shelton at the Vanity Fair Oscar party:

Same rumpled-bedsheet idea, slightly different execution. But for a couple reasons, Hilary Swank gets away with it a bit easier.

1) Sure, it wasn't a great concept when Swank did it, but at least she did it first -- meaning she didn't have the benefit of picking up an In Touch and seeing a cautionary photo of somebody attempting to pull off this semi-tragedy. Whereas Shelton had ample chances to stumble upon this photo of Swank, which we saw about 100 times in various magazines and blogs, and think to herself, "Wow, doesn't it look like Hilary only wore that because she's been having a lot of trouble getting out of bed in the mornings, because of her depression about her broken marriage, and so wearing this dress helps her trick herself into thinking she's actually still in bed? Poor Hil. Hope she makes it through. At least she got a pedicure."

2) Bubble cleavage tends to make breasts look fake. Whereas Swank is using the ugly hoo-ha to build up her bust, giving an illusion that there's more under there, Shelton's is pushing things so far in and up that her breasts have that special spherical silicone look we've come to know and love as a sign of implants. And maybe hers are, maybe they aren't, but the point is, it doesn't matter: When something's fake, you rarely want it to look fake. Exhibit A: Hilary Duff's expensive yet rabbity veneers. Exhibit B: Reese Witherspoon's "emotional" Oscar acceptance speech.

3) Seriously, Shelton's dress went way more overboard on all the adornments. Insane. It's the California King sheet set to Swank's full/queen.

4) Swank has the benefit of not wearing a pair of shoes that, until recently, held a well-documented three-year monopoly on Kirsten Dunst's feet and could therefore be construed as so, so, so overdone by now.

5) Trim your bangs, Marley.

Aerin Lauder, whose face is familiar to anyone with a subscription to Vogue,  is Estee Lauder's granddaughter. She's held loads of high-powered jobs at places that make many of the things that you buy at Bloomingdale's and then smear on your face in hopes of holding the wrinkles at bay.  By all accounts, she's fairly down to earth. (And "by all accounts," I mean, "by what I read in W," so take that with the proverbial grain.) At the very least, I know from seeing pictures of her in the many, many glossy magazines I subscribe to, she owns a lot of outfits.

Surely one of them would have worked better than this:

The cut of this dress reminds me of a shirt I own,  aa button-up shirt that I love, but which has an unfortunate tendency to unbutton on me whenever I, say, get out of my car or take my handbag off my shoulder. I am on constant Bra Alert in this shirt.  And as far as Bra Alert goes for Ms Lauder: RED ALERT, AERIN. RED ALERT.

Never one to exhibit any sense of occasion, Stephanie Seymour followed up last year's Vanity Fair party assfest with another converted piece of lingerie:

I suppose, technically, she's more covered up this year, but it's still only a dress in the loosest sense.

Where last year I felt like she thought she smelled an orgy and came running, this year I think she had choreographed a safari-themed Vegas revue in her head entitled Cheetahs, about adulterous feral, feline femmes, and showed up in costume to woo rich backers with all her "come pitch a tent in my wilderness" jokes.