POLITICS OF RED CARPET DRESSING

Pop the champagne! Awards season is upon us, and there's so much more at stake than just a handful of shiny statuettes. After all, an all-but-unknown actress can become world-famous by the time she's reached the end of that 16,500 square feet of red carpet on Oscar night. All this week we're talking to the Hollywood stylists who make legendary fashion moments. Here, Cristina Ehrlich, the red carpet stylist to Brie Larson, Allison Williams, and others, tells all. 

What's your specialty?

Creating an identity for either hot new young girls—Brie Larson, Margot Robbie, Greta Gerwig, Allison Williams—who are kind of a clean slate, or working with women—Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Julianna Margulies—and turning them out to look effortless and elegant. I have this ability to hear what my clients need and what their biggest insecurities are, and to find a way to make it fun for them. At the end of the day, it's clothes. I don't want to say it's not that deep, but they're actors, comedians, writers, producers, and the pressure on them is already so huge—the clothing part should be fun. It's about identifying what their style is and what they feel most comfortable in. I look at each of them as their own entity.

How has it changed since you started out in 2002?

Fashion, for a lot of actresses, is a very big part of their business now. It's not just like, "I have a premiere! What should I wear?" A lot of my clients have advertising commitments—they're the face of L'Oréal, American Express, Garnier, Simple Skin Care. The politics behind calling in [designers'] clothes has gotten so hardcore. There's only one set of samples with most brands, and every designer has star pieces—the ones that, like, five celebrity stylists are calling in at the same time. It becomes, Okay, do we send this to Ruth Wilson or Brie Larson or Kate Hudson? Everybody has to play nice in the sandbox. A designer like Jason Wu may love the idea of sending me a dress for Gugu Mbatha-Raw, but if nothing's available, I may have to try for six months. The biggest frustration is when [a client's rep] calls me and says she needs a fitting tomorrow. I'm like, well, it doesn't work like that.

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