Thursday, March 23, 2000

Oscar de la yenta

Alert the fashion police! Have Joan Rivers and daughter Melissa, TV's acid-tongued couture critics, shown up for a breakfast interview in Los Angeles wearing the same buttery-gold Carolina Herrera jackets?
   "Matching outfits by mistake," Joan says, laughing off the twin togs. "I think we look like the Barry Sisters, an old Yiddish act. Or it's 'before and after.' "
   Melissa blames the match on their tight schedule. Dashing out of the house to a waiting limo, neither had time to change.
   The Rivers girls are Hollywood's reigning experts on the fashion faux pas. For the past six years on cable's E! Entertainment channel, they've hosted live "pre-show" specials preceding the Oscars, Emmys and Golden Globes. Stationed at opposite ends of the red carpet, Joan and Melissa tag-team nominees and their dates to pose the question "Who are you wearing?"
   Before the 72nd Academy Awards are presented Sunday, the mother-daughter team again will offer their running commentary on the wardrobe choices of Hollywood's thin and mighty.
   "The 2000 E! Academy Awards Live Pre-Show" begins at 5 p.m. Sunday, capping eight hours of pre-Oscar programming on E! (AT&T Cable channel 31).
   The Oscarcast airs live at 7 p.m. Sunday on ABC.
   Joan and Melissa's Oscar fashionfest is E!'s highest rated show of the year. Says E! senior vice-president John Rieber: "We have turned the very small concept of celebrities walking into a building into a major television event."
   Closet cases
   The fun, of course, is seeing Joan diss the outre outfits. At past events the comedian/QVC-jewelry-designer has turned her cosmetically enhanced schnozz up at clothes worn by Anthony Edwards, Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Mariah Carey, Camryn Manheim, Sarah Jessica Parker and Sally Kirkland.
   Telling celebs their designer duds are duds is just part of the act, says Joan.
   "Our job is to entertain. Our job is to make it funny and happy and a wonderfully amusing show. That's No. 1. Our second job is to tell the truth. So we have to sometimes say, 'I don't like that.' If it's really terrible."
   Melissa's biggest peeve about star style is any actor who goes for the Brad Pitt bed-head and ends up looking like a parrot in a windstorm.
   "With the men it's really about grooming and looking like you actually did just shave and take a shower and that things fit well. That you didn't just take off your baseball hat in the car. Unfortunately that's a look. The whole Brad Pitt messy kind of thing. But Brad Pitt has enough style that it works for Brad Pitt," says Melissa, who also produces all the "Fashion Review" specials for E!
   Some celebs have complained about Joan and Melissa's on-camera barbs. Pish-tosh to them, says Joan.
   "The big stars know it's fun. The big ones get it, it's all a game, it's all fun. It's a celebration... The ones that say 'They said something mean about me' are always the fourth star down in a (TV) series sitting in the (bad) box on 'Hollywood Squares.' You know?"
   Joan and Melissa give enthusiastic snaps to Tom Hanks, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mel Gibson for always looking sleek at the big events. Ditto Sharon Stone, Whitney Houston, Lauren Bacall, Jada Pinkett Smith, Celine Dion and Gwyneth Paltrow.
   Joan even liked the ill-fitting pink Ralph Lauren prom dress Paltrow wore at last year's Oscars (where she picked up the Best Actress statuette for "Shakespeare in Love").
   "She looked so fresh. She walked in and she was so fresh and so happy and so radiant and she was with her father. She wasn't showing the ass and she wasn't shaking the boobs," Joan recalls. "She was so wonderful. I thought she was just fabulous. She was like a princess."
   Polishing the act
   The Riverses' critical take on who's-wearing-whom has had a direct effect on the Hollywood fashion elite. Afraid of getting slagged by Joan and Melissa, many award nominees now hire teams of stylists to prep them for the big night.
   "We're the stylists' godsend. Everyone's running out and hiring stylists so they won't make a mistake. But the secure ones allow their personalities to come through," says Melissa.
   Joan thinks most of the stars play it too safe fashion-wise. No more outrageous plumes on Cher or see-through PJs on Barbra Streisand.
   "It's very sad what's happened. It really depresses me that nobody comes really looking like a fool," says Joan.
   Adds her daughter, "They're all taking themselves so seriously. Everybody's got to stop and take a deep breath and say, 'This is fun, this is the fun part.' "
   But even Melissa gets the heebie-jeebies about what to wear on awards night.
   "I get a little anxiety from these things. I have an event dream the night before where (actor) John Cusack is screaming at me because I'm wearing navy blue."
   After the Oscars, Melissa and her mom take their act to the Cannes Film Festival and then onto the Republican and Democratic national conventions, where for the first time E! will present fashion specials about the presidential contenders.
   Note to Al Gore and George W. Bush: Nix on the Brad Pitt thing.
   Shopping with Joan
   So, I wanted to know, what does fashion maven Joan Rivers consider the hottest must-haves for Spring and Summer 2000?
   "I've been to all the meetings at Vogue and all the big runway shows," she told me. "This year it's the ethnic look. Fringe. Everything with fringe and brocade trim. Denim, denim, denim. Get yourself a red or orange trenchcoat. The trenchcoat is the big thing right now. Color is huge. Ethnic jewelry. Bracelets, Earrings. It's all the '60s all over again."
   Already out: Baguette bags, cow prints, halter tops and pashminas.
  
  
  

 
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