Well Played

Katherine Heigl's recent spate of interviews and the wretchedly unfunny previews for 27 Dresses have me a) concerned she might be a bit of a pill in real life, b) totally sick of her, and c) in disbelief that this movie appears to think that simply dyeing her hair faintly brown will help us believe Katherine Heigl is suddenly sort of frumpy and dowdy and weak-willed. Great message there, people.

In fact, I wish Jennifer Love Hewitt would go BACK to being a darker brunette because it makes her look more striking. Check it out:

This is just an achingly pretty dress, which paired with the shoes gives Jennifer a really lovely old-movie glamour. Even Cardbord Heigl seems to be eyeing her, all, "I can't believe you look better than I do. SLEEP WITH ONE EYE OPEN, ho. Trust."

As a fair-skinned lass, I know it's tough to wear that pale pinky color without it washing you out (and as a side note, I accidentally pasted that sentence into Google and it came up with a line from what's trying to be the world's longest poem that read, "It would help if the firefighter inside you lit a fire," which... I don't think THAT'S necessarily the solution here; for one thing, it would char the heck out of her womb). Jennifer mostly succeeds, and I think the "mostly" comes from the fact that it's her hair -- with an assist from her makeup -- washing her out and not the dress. If she went back to that awesome, shiny darker brown hair, and possibly rediscovered bangs, she could probably get away with the minimalist makeup and the light hue of the dress, because the dark cherry on top would elevate it all.

Also, Dark-Haired-Hewitt is from the glory days of the Ghost Whisperer -- YES, the show has some, thank you very much -- when her coifs and fake eyelashes and old-school nighties and bedjackets were HUUUGE. So maybe I'm just being nostalgic. Still, that doesn't detract from how fantastic that dress is on her. She's someone who's struggled, I think, to find the right cuts of clothes to accentuate her natural assets (I am not at all sure the Ghost Whisperer costumer is putting this kind of effort into it). This one is perfect: She's all woman, brimming with curves that demand to be celebrated. Which I am sure her fiance will gleefully take care of later.

Certainly, there has been no shortage of moments in Katie Holmes' life in recent years that have made us go, "Wait, SERIOUSLY?" And that's just from the couch-jumping and the engagement and pregnancy and wedding and fashion-embracing and Posh-befriending; it doesn't even include anything that's happened behind closed doors. Not that we're implying her husband is odd or anything. He's totally normal to us. Everyone we know leaps onto their living-room set at least twice daily. Furniture is a thrill.

At any rate, all things considered, nothing should surprise me with her any more. Yet somehow I still caught myself saying aloud this morning, "Wait... SERIOUSLY? Since when did Katie Holmes become someone who could pull off a TOGA?"

Bear with me here, as we got a lot of e-mails from people who could not have hated this more -- and who will, in fact, greet this with a, "Wait, SERIOUSLY?" of their own. So let me clarify: The dress itself does nothing for me. It definitely has the whiff of bedsheet about it, like maybe her exuberant husband grabbed one off the bed and ran around her twice and then screamed, "GLORIOUS,"  before hitting his head on the four-poster and passing out cold.

But Katie IN the dress... this I like. Granted, her first best move was to realize that America loves Suri, and that she should reinvent her cranium in her wee sprog's image. They are seriously ever-more the spitting image of one another. As for the dress, though, it kind of takes on a Quality on her body. It's still kind of boring to me on its own merits,  and I think on a lot of people I'd be wailing and pulling out my hair. Katie, though, looks really rather pretty. The makeup is tasteful, her bod looks amazing -- I would very much like to borrow her shoulders, if she's looking to broaden her range of charitable acts -- and although the shoes are fairly standard, they ALSO appear to fit her, make her legs look fabulous, and don't overshadow the overall look. As a result, I glance at the dress, but inevitably my attention turns to her hair, her face, her skin, her figure, and the fact that I am pretty sure she is eleven feet tall. And that's how it should be. The dress isn't wearing her; she, bluntly put, is wearing the shit out of it. So you go, Suri-Kate Holmes-Cruise. In my eyes, you won this one.

And feel free to have another kid, because you did a bang-up job the first time. I'm just saying. Think of our needs.

Rachel Bilson has been looking so cute lately. Why doesn't this girl have a regular job?

Seriously, someone needs to pay her once this strike is over to do more episodic work.  She was terrific as Summer, she was adorable a few weeks ago in a two-episode stint on Chuck -- where, ironically, she worked in a deli and extolled the virtues of sandwiches that I kind of wish she ate more of in real life -- and yet she only has one movie in the can since. You know, she would have been great in Samaire Armstrong's part on Dirty Sexy Money, but alas, that's not an option at this point. If only I had been consulted.

Fortunately this relative inactivity has not reduced her to a reclusive and messy life of Pringles-stained sweatpants and trucker hats. This dress is flattering, sophisticated, and a beautiful color, and I wish it were in my closet right now. Maybe Santa will drop it there while he's running around picking up everyone's Christmas lists and checking to make sure he can fit down everyone's chimneys despite having thirds at the dessert buffet last night. Come on, Santa. Snap out of the sugar coma.

Aw, that's right, Fergie Ferg, take a bow.

It seems so long ago now that she was running around town dressed like Pippi Longstocking on a bender. If you'd told me then that I'd be patting Fergie on the back for looking like a lovely lady at a posh event, I'd have laughed and suggested that you stop using Elmer's Glue as nasal spray. Sure, the matchy satin shoes are a bit bridesmaidy, but that's splitting hairs when you consider that we used to be lucky if she even brushed her tresses. The dress color is so pretty on her and the cut is flattering, and her coif is shiny... maybe Josh Duhamel is finally using his hotness to bring her up to his level. Or maybe one night in the middle of a lasagna cookoff in their shared kitchen, Fergie dropped a colander of flat noodles and gasped, "OH MY GOD, WAIT, OLIVER! WASN'T A FASHION SHOW, WAS IT?!?" At which point Josh swept her into his arms, carried her up to the bedroom, and gently laid her down... on the floor of her closet, where they proceeded to make sweet, sweet Goodwill piles.

At any rate, Happy Holidays to us, because I get to use the word "lovely" to refer to her without having to follow it with the hugely unsexy "lady lumps" epithet.

Our roller-coaster of a relationship with Kristen Bell's fashion sense continues apace:

[Photo: infdaily.com]

Nice cleavage, babe! And you actually look kind of tall with that empire waist. Your makeup also perfectly complements the red in the dress, and in case I didn't mention it strongly enough before, I really meant it: Nice cleavage. Enjoy not having to wear a bra while you can, little girl. Gravity will chafe your navel soon enough.

Still, I do spy a few wrinkles -- I do still think there's a REASON "satin" is only one vowel away from being "Satan" -- but I'll let it slide because the overall effect is so good. Furthermore, the satin isn't nearly as crinkled and crunched as I've seen it before, and really, it's hard to hide from that fabric forever. Sometimes it's unavoidable, like a pimple, or Brad Garrett. You just have to accept it as part of life, learn to live happily anyway, and hope you own a really wicked travel steamer. For the satin, that is. I've never known a travel steamer to work on Brad Garrett. But then again, maybe it's just that nobody has tried.

Why, it was just last week that I was all, "oh, Kelly, what's wrong with your make-up? Oh, Kelly, what's wrong with your hair? Kelly, why are you dressing up like Liza Minnelli? Kelly Kelly Kelly Kelly Kelly Kelly Kelly." (Sorry, that was just a reflex.) And it's like she was LISTENING:

How adorable she looks! How pixie-like! How prettily made up! I feel like a proud mama, although not like her proud mama, because if I were to suddenly start feeling like Sharon Osbourne...well, I guess now that I think about it, Sharon could actually probably very easily step in for me here if I were to have both of my arms broken by Jessica Simpson in a tussle over the last butterscotch pop down at See's Candies or something.

In other news, there's Kimberly Stewart:

Dear Rachel Bilson,

Hi! How are you? I am fine. You were cute on Chuck this week. I think you are pretty. I also have a favor to ask.

Would you mind writing a little pamphlet called, say, Fashion For Shorties or Dressing the Heightually Challenged or Little Ladies Looking Like [Complimentary Word Starting With an "L" -- you'll think of something], or...whatever, you can title it whatever you want. Anyway, it'd be about how you manage, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, to show up places looking totally relaxed and chic, but not at all stumpy or overwhelmed by your clothing, despite the fact that you're only, like, three apples high. There are some people I need to send it to (KRISTEN BELL but don't tell her, I want it to be a surprise).

Thank you!

Love,

Jessica

Just yesterday I was at the hair salon, chit-chatting with my colorist about Kelly Clarkson, and how - although we love her -- she is often kind of a mess.  (This included reminiscing about how, when she first started on American Idol, she had those really chunky, very evenly spaced highlights that kind of made her head look like it was stuck behind bars in a prison of its own hair). But apparently, K. Cla got wind of our loving-yet-frustrated smack-talkery and decided to prove once and for all that, on occasion, she CAN dress herself:

I mean, is this the most hot-yet-also-revolutionary-fashion-forward-thing you've ever seen in your entire life? No. And yet, does she look super cute and comfortable in her own skin, and age appropriate, and not as though she's been digging through J. Lo's reject pile for items that make her look vaguely like an alien extra from the sequel to From Justin to Kelly, called From Justin to KellyII: Intergalatic Boogaloo? Yes. We'll take it.

My first thought when I saw this dress on Patti Labelle was, "Well, I suppose it was only a matter of time before Laura Ashley started hitting the bong."

Seriously, if there were a Broomcorn Farms Harvest Pageant Barbie, she would be wearing something like this for the talent portion. And Patti wants you to DRINK IT IN, GOOD PEOPLE, like it's the bourbon you keep in your hip flask (or in the fully stocked wet bar she's got stowed away somewhere in the neighborhood of her pelvis). I'm sitting here begging her to pick a silhouette and go with it -- cocktail-length frippery or sleekly silhouetted evening wear, but not its mutant bastard child-- and Patti's out there all, "TA-DA! That's RIGHT! I'll be here all week, folks! Tip my publicist."

But then I learned that she actually DID have a magic trick up her sleeve -- or skirt, as it were.

I think I'm developing a girl-crush on MGH right now. Although I can't call her that again, because it sounds like a beer -- like a hybrid blend called Miller Genuine High Life, billed as the Prosecco of beers rather than the champagne of them. And that's not fitting for Marcia Gay Harden, because she is nothing less than the champagne of hotties in this dress.

She looks fantastic -- age-appropriate but not stodgy; cute and fresh, but not like she's trying to emulate some fancy 18-year old pantyless coke fiend spreading her legs on the way out of a limo. And I think we all know how tempting it is to copy THAT behavior, so she's clearly mighty of will in addition to being formidably well-dressed. Bravo, non-skanky hot lady. Bravo.