THE COMPLETE BOOK OF OSCAR FASHION: Variety's 75 Years of Glamour on the Red Carpet

The day after the Academy Awards ceremony, movie fans are as abuzz about what the stars wore as about who won. Who can forget Cher looking like a seductive alien rooster in a skimpy Bob Mackie outfit with feathered headdress, or Bjork showing up with a swan wrapped around her neck? Photos of those appearances and hundreds more fill this fun book showcasing an array of Oscar fashion from the 1920s to this year's 75th anniversary party, focusing on women but also mentioning the tuxedo choices of a few men. Chace, a fashion and beauty reporter, organizes the looks by decade, throwing in subject-oriented features on, for example, women who attended the ceremony while visibly pregnant, or the repetition of certain looks then and now. There's an accessible, magazine-like sense to the book, as Chace displays no less than two photos (and as many as five) on each page, along with snappy captions (a shot of Melanie Griffith, star of Working Girl , in 1989, is titled "Work It, Girl"; an image of Audrey Hepburn in a belted Givenchy dress in 1954 bears the caption "It's a Cinch"). Throughout, Chace offers miniportraits of top designers from Elsa Schiaparelli to Narciso Rodriguez and sums up each era in an opening page (e.g., the 1960s were all about "looking forward," as Psycho star Janet Leigh sported a close-fitting dress made of a sparkly fabric and Jane Fonda shunned tradition and opted for a dressed-down look). Although occasionally the sheer profusion of sidebars, tinted pages and overlapping photos is disorienting, the volume presents a comprehensive and most enjoyable look at Hollywood fashion dos and don'ts. 500 photos. (Oct.)

Forecast: This launch title from Reed Press (owned by Reed Business Information, which also owns PW) features a black faux-velvet cover that bookstore browsers are going to notice. With the Oscar audience passing one billion viewers each year, the potential buyership for this book is immense.