By Nadine Kam

My favorite Emmy dress by Reem Acra.

I watched some of the Emmy red carpet arrivals Sunday, tuning in and out, while tuning out of the ceremony itself, which, lacking one main host, seemed to be scattered, lacking a center.

My favorite Emmy dress was Reem Acra’s, worn by Olivia Wilde. It looked so perfect, clean, elegant and glamorous, yet with a lot of painstaking detail that put it way ahead of the dime-a-dozen strapless column or sheath gowns favored by the other actresses. From the distance of television, they look too similar to mass-market clothing to be remotely interesting.

It’s kind of sad that the purpose of the red carpet is to showcase the actors, but instead, the focus is now on the dresses, inanimate objects that nevertheless have the power to steal the spotlight from the stars.

We take for granted when we see chandeliers that they’re made of glass or crystal, but the one adorning the Green Room Emmy Awards was made of 3,300, or $10 million worth of Hearts on Fire diamonds.

I was just talking to Tom Wheeler, owner of Opal Fields, about Hearts on Fire diamonds, cut to display a symmetrical 8-point pattern when viewed under a proportion scope. A 1-carat stone he showed me was $15,000 and its brilliance could be seen from across the room. Anyone buying a diamond should be able to look at it under the scope to see exactly what you’re getting.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 12:22 am and is filed under People, Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.