Designers in Fierce Competition For Red Carpet Recognition
This awards season, designers are stepping up
their efforts to convince stylists to dress celebrities in their fashions. For the Golden Globes tomorrow night, the competition has been fierce to land a major celeb to wear a designer's gown, jewelry, handbag or shoes on the red carpet. With the recession in full swing, designers are feeling the urgency to get their creations worn by a major star.
For the first time ever, Stuart Weitzman has offered to make custom shoes for celebrities walking the red carpet. Angelina Jolie's team has requested two pairs of peep-toe heels to match a gown she may wear tomorrow: one pair is sand colored, the other oyster-colored. But the shoes are just the beginning.
As sales of designer goods have plummeted over the past several months, Hollywood's awards season has become all the more important to fashion designers and accessories labels who are trying to get people to spend once again. The competition to dress celebrities is fiercer than ever also because fashion labels feel they are less able to count on getting their message to shoppers via their traditional mode of print marketing, as sales of fashion and other magazines have dropped within the past year. Awards shows and the parties around them offer millions of dollars in free advertising for designers.
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For the first time, Judith Ripka designed a line of 20 jewelry pieces just for awards season, in the hopes that the one-of-a-kind looks will convince stylists to use them in red-carpet ensembles.
New York-based Paul Wilmot Communications, which represents red-carpet favorites Oscar de la Renta and Monique Lhuillier among others, is flying out 50% more evening gowns and cocktail dresses to Los Angeles this year in order to lobby celebrity stylists to put them on their clients, Mr. Wilmot said. The public relations firm, which used to make a big push mainly for the Academy Awards by sending four staffers to L.A. two weeks ahead of the event, said that this year, they will send eight staff members four to five weeks before the Oscars in order to reach out to stylists for events such as the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Jan. 25.
Top stylists say they are getting calls not just from the designers' publicists, but from top designers themselves. No doubt Rachel Zoe has been absolutely inundated with requests. We do hope that Bravo is filming every second of this week.
This awards season, designers are 
