Oscar & me.(Made for Each Other)(Book review)

If you are interested in the high-stakes interaction between the Academy Awards and fashion, you should really read

a new book by Bronwyn Cosgrave, called Made for Each Other. I read it in first galleys just before the Christmas rush, and it was delicious.

The cover of the book shows Renee Zellweger at the Oscars in 2001, wearing what I consider one of the most elegant red-carpet looks ever, an antique lemon-yellow chiffon dress by Jean Desses from the vintage emporium Lily et Cie. She is walking with a prance that conveys both authority and sheer glee. I love it that Cosgrave chose this photo because Zellweger really was a bellwether of the trend that, in recent years, has brought an expectation of impeccability and good taste to the big night.

For me, personally, red-carpet season is a bit of a leap-year thing: One year, I am lying low; the next I am on the road to Los Angeles dressing Sophie Okonedo in Rochas for her Best Supporting Actress nomination for Hotel Rwanda. The Zellweger-in-Desses year, though, was really a memorable one, as I was completely swept up in the Texan's behind-the-scenes fashion drama.

Zellweger had worn black vintage Galanos to pick up her Golden Globe for Nurse Betty in January 2001-dramatically almost missing the envelope-opening, as she was in the ladies' room putting on fresh lip rouge. Then she barely had time to plunk her Globe down on her mantelpiece before being

jet-rushed to Paris for an extravagant five-day Vogue shoot. Renee was whisked into the Ritz, where the crew and I grabbed her and literally thrust her into Chanel couture. That photo essay was based on Audrey Hepburn's classic fashion spoof, Funny Face, and shot by Arthur Elgort.

(Somehow, during all this, I fell sick, ending up with a stiff leg as solid as granite . . . which led to a blood clot . . . and, having waved goodbye to Zellweger at the airport several days later, I hobbled off-like the racehorse Barbaro after the Kentucky Derby-and checked myself in to Lenox Hill Hospital, where my friend and interior designer Mica Ertegun decorated a private room like a Turkish tent with draped printed toile. . . . And, well, anyway, in retrospect, it's not a bad war story.)