Fashion Notebook

Oscar Wrap-Up: Which Actresses Repped Their Brands the Best on the Red Carpet

So we're back after a late night staying up for that tired annual awards show: The  Oscars. (We know the show ended just after 11:40 our time, but we stayed up late bitching to our bicoastal friends about lame montages, good/bad dresses, and, like everyone else apparently, Diablo Cody).

Seriously, if it weren't our job to stay up  until the wee hours tracking who was wearing what, how they wore it, and how brands made their way onto the stage or in the commercial slots, we would have wrapped this up by 9:00 pm EST and sailed off to bed on a few DVR'ed episodes of "Paula's Home Cooking."

But, for better or worse, we stayed up, enduring less-than-pithy commentary by John Stewart, and some heartbreaking losses ("Surf's Up" losing out to "Ratatouille" for Best Animated Feature and "There Will Be Blood" losing out to "No Country For Old Men" for Best Picture). And it's a good thing we did, because the marketing, as far as we're concerned was the star of this year's drag-along show. But let's kick it off chronologically, with some of the more notable carpet dress-vertisements. (Note: All pictures per WWD. "Fierce Factor"s, our own judgment of how well the star wore her particular dress, set against how likely the placement is to boost the brand, are awarded on a 1.0-5.0 scale.)

Name: Amy Adams
Film: Enchanted
Dress: Proenza Schouler
Fierce Factor: 4.0
Our Take: Aesthetically, this is the perfect pairing. Adams' red hair and ivory white skin work wonders against the emerald gown. The edgy, classic appeal evokes a more colorful version of John Singer Sargent's "Madame X" or the femme fatale of H. Anglada- Camarasa's "Retrato de Sonia Klamery." Unfortunately, points off for that eye-gouging performance, though the girl did have to pimp her movie. Also, she's not that high-profile. 

Name: Penélope Cruz
Film: No noms this year, most recent was "Volver"
Dress: Chanel
Fierce Factor: 4.5
Our Take: Even so-so dresses look amazing on Penélope Cruz. Not only does the girl have extracurriculars to add to her hotness (Cruz speaks four languages! Name one of her American contempos that can claim that), but she can pull off designs that would look perhaps silly on a lesser body. Straight up: she's a stunner every time with no bad publicity to drag her down. With her small frame and captivating gaze really pronouncing this dress, Karl gets the most out of a rather ho-hum haute couture look.

Name: Cameron Diaz
Film: No noms this year, er, like every other year. Most recently, "Shrek The Third"
Dress: Dior by John Galliano
Fierce Factor: 3.0
Our Take: We will never understand why Diaz always gets Mr. Galliano's best. Don't get us wrong, the girl has a great frame, an established bold-faced name, and she photographs well. That, in and of itself, is worth the plug. But c'mon! Certainly the upper crust clientele doesn't want to share threads with Hollywood's leading empress of the Ditzy Dame shtick, right? And we're not going to hate on the pleats, like E! did. But, at the end of the day, it's a rather dull dress, on a very dull girl.

Name: Marion Cotillard
Film: "La Vie En Rose," WON: Best Actress
Dress: Jean Paul Gaultier
Fierce Factor: 5.0
Our Take: Perfect storm here, folks! Not was this fish-scale detailed mermaid dress equal parts daring and stunning for the red carpet debut, but its wearer walked away with the Best Actress award. And did so with one of the most genuine speeches we've seen in some time from the Oscars! As an added bonus for Mr. Gaultier, she's been the talk of the papers this morning, with pictures abounding. What she'll also likely add to that nice stew is that her figure looks like a real woman (admittedly, a thin woman) and she fills out the dress in a wonderfully tasteful way. This is as good as it gets!

Name: Nicole Kidman
Film: "The Golden Compass"
Dress: Balenciaga
Fierce Factor: 2.5
Our Take: What goes up must also come down, and the real low point (ok, with some obvious exceptions that we'll note later, we're lookin' at YOU, Diablo) came with this unfortunate placement on Nicole Kidman. Even preggers, she has the kind of body (read: alien model-esque) that could really show off some of Nicolas Ghesquiere's more ambitious designs, easily clinching the press coverage for the next day. Instead, she walked the carpet as a pretty, pregnant girl in a pretty boring black dress. And that diamond necklace just looked like a sad, glittery trapeze.

In summation, these were just a few of those that stood out to us last night. But we would be remiss if we didn't mention that, while Keri Russell looked great (as we imagine all women do) in the Nina Ricci gown, we were stunned that the label couldn't get more of an A-lister to work a look, especially following that stunning little yellow dress that worked so well on Reese Witherspoon last year! Also, all of our friends were screaming (screaming!) about Diablo Cody, and not in a good way. The dress was terrible, no wonder the maker has not appeared in any credits we've seen, and she looked like so many tired Betty Page-hipster-wannabes that we see most nights at Beauty Bar. (But we'd like to submit, for the record, that we liked "Juno".) Also, Tilda Swinton didn't do much for that Lanvin dress and that really makes us sad, because we love both of those names! We'll have to chalk that up, like the Kidman debacle mentioned above, to a stylist just making a poor choice, one for which the brand will suffer, or at best, not get any brownie points for.

But hey, we're not bitching in a vacuum people. Drop us a line and let us know what you think, either here, or in the comments below!

Research Desk: Prestige Beauty Sales Grew 2% in 2007, Sez NPD

The prestige beauty industry—that's the expensive,
marquee stuff y'all—gussied itself up in 2007, according to a report from NPD Group, Port Washington, N.Y.

The category grew 2% overall to $8.9 billion in sales for 2007. Leading that charge were the makeup and skincare categories, where sales rose 4% to $3.4 billion and $2.5 billion, respectively. Makeup still leads in market share, now at 38% of the total beauty biz, just ahead of fragrance, which controls 33% of sales, and skincare, which gets 28% of the cut at $1.2 billion in sales.

And growth in a prestige market despite The Recession! Though, we can't say we're surprised, because, after all, even in the worst of times we'll plunk down the cash to prevent the world from seeing our wrinkly, blemished, pale faces, or smelling our "natural" scent. And hey, if it's got a designer name on the box, all the better! If we're not paying more than $100 for the goods, we usually chalk it up to a normal indulgence, especially when it lasts for a year (Happy Valentine's Day to our very dresser-top fave Prada Amber Pour Homme!).

Seems NPD's senior beauty analyst, Karen Grant, agrees.

"During challenging economic times in 2007, the prestige beauty industry managed to rise above the negatives," said Grant in the report. "Women and men are still willing to spend money on products that make them look and feel better."

However what did surprise us were the rankings of the top fragrances, for both male and female shoppers (keep in mind that females actually buy a greater percentage of men's fragrance than men do):

1. Acqua Di Gio (Giorgio Armani)
2. Beautiful (Estée Lauder)
3. Coco Mademoiselle (Chanel)
4. Chanel No. 5 (Chanel)
5. Cashmere Mist (Donna Karan)

OK, ok, Beautiful isn't a surprise, nor is Chanel No. 5, those fragrances are so classic they're a lock for the top spots. Coco Mademoiselle is an interesting one, since we were sure that everyone was like sooo over their current ad girl, Keira Knightley, but it's obvs just us who thinks she just a poor-man's version of Penelope Cruz with a perma-pout. And Cashmere Mist? We have to think some of those sales were a case of mistaken identity. We've never touched the stuff but the bottle looks like an exotic sex toy.

But the real shocker was No. 1: Acqua di Gio. Seriously!? Acqua di Gio!? We thought that fragrance was hot like, four years ago when we were having our Año Español and all the boys (including us) were awash in that sweet, citrus-y smell. But that was four years ago!

"It's just an easy fragrance, a good juice that easy and likable and that no one is going to hate you for gifting," Grant told us, admitting even she had been surprised that the fragrance had stayed on top for the past several years. "Men can wear it to work and to the club, and women like it, which you know is the number one factor for the guys. It isn't overpowering and its versatile. They've hit on a formula that is working on both the mass and prestige levels."

Grant also told us that a new ad campaign, by parent L'Oréal's agency Publicis, that offered new imagery for the popular fragrance, was well timed to continue the momentum of the brand last year, swapping out male model Larry Scott with Lars Burmeister (pictured above, with product), and bowing a new TV campaign, which you can view, to your water-dripping-on-abs delight, below.

Penelope Cruz-a-palooza: Mango's First U.S. Campaign Drops in February

Look for a new string of print, outdoor and online ads for
Mango in February 2008.

The Spanish fast fashion retailer will launch its first-ever US campaign this coming February. The creative will feature actress Penélope Cruz, who will continue to be the face of Mango for the spring and summer 2008 seasons. Check out the shots at right (click to enlarge). (In other Cruz news, the actress is currently working "Los Abrazos Rotos," or "Broken Hugs" in English, a new film with her director pal, Pedro Almodóvar, that is due out in 2008.)

The campaign, per Optimedia, New York, follows the launch of the brand's U.S. flagship store in Soho in late November, which brings their stateside store total to 11. The brand plans to open an additional 5-7 doors next year.

"We want to take as much advantage as possible of having Penélope as our brand image for this spring campaign as she represents the Mango style at its top level," Judith Rius, Mango's advertising director, told me recently, adding that the campaign was shot by photo duo Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott. Spend on the campaign was not available.

Cruz has gone deep with the brand recently, launching her own collection (designed by the actress in tandem with her sister, Mónica) at Mango in September.

The opening of the flagship store, as well as the plans to roll out a much more aggressive advertising campaign in the U.S. market, reflect the brand's growing investment overseas.

"From now on we are going to invest more in the U.S., and that starts with our new flagship in New York," Rius said. "We are really at the beginning in this country. We have over 200 stores in Spain, and only 11 in the United states so we have a lot more room to grow."