Dress by Zoe Hong

Last week, I worked with the Oscars® Designer Challenge 2011. It is a pretty cool concept: Up-and-coming fashion designers submit sketches of red carpet dresses and the best ten dresses are selected by a jury then the dresses are featured in the Challenge. The winning dress is worn by that girl who hands out the Oscars to each winner, so the visibility is global fabulosity. If you think about it, its a better reality show that The Fashion Show or some of these other Johnny Come Lately fashion contest shows because you cannot beat having your dress on the Oscars telecast and on the Red Carpet. Yes, I told Toni Thompson, who has spearheaded this project, that it would make a great reality show, but sadly, the Oscars dont see things the same way.

The Black Swan is the key inspiration for most of the hair styles shown in the Challenge.

The hair for the presentation to the media was done by Roy Teeluck and his crack team of hair people that he flew in from New York and Miami. The make-up was done by Bruce Grayson and his team of Los Angeles based beautification experts. Here are a few of the final entries but click to oscar.com and register to vote for your favorite dress. The Oscars Designer Challenge in on!

Dress by Katelyn Bischoff

Here Roy did a low-up-do.

Dress by Clay Sadler

A high pony tail is always a great look.

Dress by James DeColon. Talk about Black Swan…I mean…

This exaggerated up-do is kind of Bride of Frankenstein fierce.

Dress by Octavio Carlin

Yet another low-up-do.

Dress Boris Powell

Up with curls.