ballgown time

Most Starlets Don’t Really Spend the Price of a House on Red-Carpet Styling

Red-carpet stylist Phillip Bloch, who put Halle Berry in the embroidered gown she wore when she accepted her Oscar in 2002, breaks down an actress’s total cost for getting ready for an award show, as follows:

• Stylist fees: $1,000 to $1,500 a day for Bloch’s services. He’ll probably spend two days working on an Oscar dress. (He says other stylists claim to charge $5,000 to $6,000 a day, but he doesn’t believe them.)
• Dress: $5,000 to $20,000.
• Shoes: $700 to $1,000.
• Hair and makeup: $2,500 to $5,000.
• Tailoring: $500 to upwards of $1,500.
• Jewelry: $100,000 to a few million, but Bloch estimates the average cost of jewels on each starlet is about half a million. Exceptions include the pumpkin diamond Halle Berry wore to the ‘02 Oscars, which was a few million.
TOTAL ACCORDING TO BLOCH: $115,700 to a few million.

And then there’s underwear, and maybe a tiny clutch that probably has nothing in it and a famous Oscar attendee can’t hire someone to carry. However, most actresses borrow their dress, shoes, and jewelry, which would bring Bloch’s total estimated cost of six to seven figures down to about $10,000, which is a paltry sum for most of these people. But we like how Bloch is trying to make it seem like more, like those stylists he believes are lying about their fees.

The high cost of Oscar styling [The Thread]

Most Starlets Don’t Really Spend the Price of a House on Red-Carpet Styling