MANILA, Philippines - I just want to know who is going to pull a Kanye,” says Christina Applegate in a seriously cougaresque dress by Basil Soda that looks like it was torn off Kim Cattrall. The Emmy Red Carpet is usually a great event for spotting some serious sartorial crimes because of all the TV actors. (TV folks make a lot less dough than their movie star counterparts so they don’t have the kind of dinero to hire the likes of Rachel Zoe which means: no stylist. Which means: no supervision. Yay for us.) TV people are manna for the fashion police because they clearly still shop at Forever 21 and don’t mind getting their hair done at Super Cuts.
But this time, talk was all about Kanye and his mic blocking, (which is so last week, by the way) because of all the yawn-inducing gowns. Trends that emerged: Red. (On a red carpet? To borrow Seth Myer’s expression: Really?) Fishtails. (Time for that train to kick the bucket. If we see one more gown with a fishtail hem, we are going to hurl. And since we’re not into the whole bulimia trend, we’d like to refrain from upchucking the buckets of popcorn we inhaled in preparation for our red carpet coverage. What? If you had to look at these gowns, you’d need all the carbs you could get your grubby hands on, too.)
Leighton Meester
CELINE: On someone else this would have a disaster of Bjork-ian proportions. However on the greatest foot jobber that ever lived, she looks beyond her Gossip Girl years.
BEA: Even with feminine pads on her shoulders, the Gossip Girl star still looks great. Who am I kidding? I’m in like with the Bottega Veneta dress. It must be the fan girl in me, but it’s impossible for me to hate on Meester.
Chloe Sevigny
C: Always an original. Like everything else that she does.
B: Sevigny puts everyone to shame in this one-shoulder number that makes all the other girls’ dresses look like discount knockoffs.
Sigourney Weaver
C: Even if she looks hot for her age, the dress might be a little too hit on the eyes.
B: Girlfriend can bust out the artillery in Aliens but she can’t choose a gown worth a damn. You look hot, girl. Next time choose a dress that doesn’t mimic the carpet, ‘k?
Tina Fey
C: Again? What the what?
B: My grandma called. She wants her prom dress back.
January Jones
C: On her way to become Grace Kelly... but please don’t ever leave Mad Men.
B: The Mad Men star’s Art Deco frock sets off her icy blond beauty and certainly makes a statement — a refreshing change from the straight-off-the-rack generic dresses we’ve been seeing.
C: The critiques on her outlandish style may have led her to this homogenous route. Buy it’s okay, actually.
B: Bland leading the blond.
Sarah Silverman
C: As she says on her show, “That’s not a vodka bottle, put it down.”
B: This dress is a joke, right? It’s one thing to aim for out of the box, it’s another to miss it completely.
Debra Messing
C: Juicy!
B: It’s not a good sign if your skin tone is on the same color wheel as your red-orange Michael Kors dress. Lindsay Lohan, you are not.
Elizabeth Moss
C: Ummmmm..... it’s silk mud.
B: The Mad Men star’s Reem Acra dress has more wrinkles than an octogenarian — or Larry King. Which is unfortunate because I love her and I hate to say anything bad so let’s end this with a helpful tip instead: Do us a favor and bust out the steamer before you hit the red carpet.
C: It’s like couture birth contraception.
B: Lady, you give pregnant women everywhere a bad name. She looks like she’s about ready to pop but her figure is about as flawless as ever. If there’s ever a time to chow on bags of Tostitos, honey, this is it. But it looks like Klum doesn’t even suffer from swollen ankles. God, someone package her genes and start selling them already.
Olivia Wilde
C: She’s a princess, right? Show me proof!
B: Let’s keep the ice skating costumes where they belong — in Bruno’s closet.
Christina Applegate
C: Her Kelly Bundy roots are showing.
B: She looks like an extra from Dog the Bounty Hunter, the Formal Edition.
Hayden Panettiere
C: Save the cheerleader!
B: If I had a buck for every age-inappropriate dress Panettiere wore to the red carpet, I’d be a little less poor.
C: She proves she’s got style, not just a stylist.
B: Byrne hardly ever makes a misstep on the red carpet. And this frothy, glittering and glamorous dress is no exception.
Kim Kardashian
C: The makeover apparently needs more tweaking.
B: Keep up, Kardashian. J.Lo already did this in 1999.
Blake Lively
C: Like her, completely overrated outfit. Leighton!
B: An acolyte of the Pamela Anderson school of style: Baywatch red, cleavage up to here and slashed skirt up to there.
Lindsay Price
C: Asia major.
B: As accessories go, Price — who’s going as Josh Radnor’s date, the dude from How I Met Your Mother — is a stunning one. Too bad Price’s show, Lipstick Jungle, got canceled because this actress looks like she’s got the chops to make use of her red carpet mileage.
Lisa Edelstein
C: She seems down to earth.
B: Ahoy, matey! Fleet Week is over, if I’m not mistaken, so I’m not exactly sure what the House star is celebrating. Her table cloth, perhaps?
C: Attention whore. He won already, okay?
B: Is a gown still a gown if it’s made up of old Obama campaign posters? Does a falling tree still make a sound if no one is around to hear it? Who says TV doesn’t make room for philosophy? Thanks to Rowell here (who, based on IMDB, has recently starred in The Young and the Restless in 2007) we get to talk politics, too. I have a feeling even Michelle Obama would pass on this one.
Jennifer Carpenter
C: TV’s golden moment.
B: There’s nothing old about this Old Hollywood dress. The Dexter actress is stunning. Somewhere Renee Zellweger is having a shit fit, wondering why she didn’t get dibs on the dress.
Jenna Fischer
C: Stylist then style follows in this case.
B: We tend to give The Office star a lot of crap for her dowdy, often matronly ensembles on the red carpet but that’s mainly because she does wear a lot of really sad dresses. This time, it looks like she made an effort to look younger and a bit edgier — but not much effort, clearly, because it looks like she got an old bridesmaid’s dress and dyed it black for the event. That’s like my cousin calling herself edgy and then listening to a Demi Lovato album.
Christina Hendricks
C: A little cheeky, a lot busty.
B: Hendricks is proof that you don’t need a mild case of anorexia to succeed in Hollywood. The Mad Men actress’s Rubenesque figure (Mad Med creator Matthew Wiener doesn’t allow his actresses to go to the gym to retain that retro figure) makes everyone else look like an ungainly toothpick. Now, if only we could get rid of that lace train...
Ginnifer Goodwin
C: She tries too hard. I’d love to see a starlet stick to her authentic sweetheartness. The dress is beautiful but I feel it does not belong on her.
B: I love a good Cinderella story as much as the next girl and Goodwin, who’s been consistently cast as the Plain Jane Misfit character throughout most of her career, has definitely blossomed as a stylish star.