Who knows if, come Oscar night next month, Marisa Tomei will choose a gown a bit more appealing than her Golden Globes effort in a shade reminiscent of rotten teeth? Or if Christina Applegate, who sported an unflattering champagne hue at the same event, had simply panicked at the last minute and decided to chuck on her old bridesmaid dress? And these two weren't, by any means, the only actresses teetering along the red carpet having settled for similar gowns in some insipid variation on saccharine peach - Rachel Griffiths, Laura Linney and Sandra Bullock were all at it.

So, as the 81st Academy Awards approaches (February 22), the real question is do we care? With seven major awards ceremonies every year and a film premiere each time you open a paper, it's no wonder that we've become inured to the less-than-impressive displays on the red carpet. Pah! If we want to see high-fashion, we'll log on to net-a-porter . Where we were once in thrall to the glamour of the silver screen and the mystique of the A-list goddesses, now we live in an age where even a celebrity's eyebrow-plucker is happy to reveal all about her client.

And need I remind you that the R-word (recession) is now upon us? How relevant are those floor-length, diaphanous, chiffon dresses with their six-figure price tags to our humdrum “just-trying-to-hang-on-to-our-jobs” existence? It's not that celebrities have no selling power, but aren't we really more interested in what Cheryl Cole wears to the local newsagent? Celeb choices off-screen reveal far more than anything they might wear or say during über-controlled interviews.

Plus, we're tired of the surrealism that surrounds these events. Come rain, shine or - if it's in this country - freezing sleet, celebs still appear trussed up in slashed-to-the-navel gowns, trotting out the same weather-defying grimaces that remind you that il faut (vraiment, vraiment) souffrir pour être belle. In the past the power of the red carpet to promote a brand was indisputable. Five or six years ago, much was made of Tom Ford or Donatella Versace jetting off to the Oscars as soon as the curtain came down on their Milan catwalk bows. And while dressing the right A-lister will never exactly hurt a label (especially in these straitened times when companies have cut their advertising budgets), there's no denying that a dwindling number of viewers are tuning into awards events.

Last year the Baftas barely scraped three million. The 2008 Oscars, meanwhile, received its smallest live audience at just 32 million in the US: during the Nineties this figure never dipped below 40 million. This year's Golden Globes relatively bombed, pulling in a meagre 14 million, 25 per cent less than expected and the smallest audience in the show's 66-year history.

And while “as many as 60 per cent of consumers buy off the back of paparazzi shots” according to the celebrity stylist Mary Alice Stephenson, designers are waking up to the fact that this exposure doesn't always come from the red carpet. Rossella Jardini, the creative director of Moschino, admits: “While the red carpet is prestigious, a paparazzi image of a celebrity wearing something accessible to more people has a much more immediate impact on sales.”

There's also the thorny issue of the disappearing celeb to put you off further , or as one weekly magazine put it, the rise of the “zoebots”, named after stars who emulate the very thin Hollywood stylist Rachel Zoe. While no stylist or casting director that I spoke to was prepared to discuss the increasingly minute frames of many actresses, the pictures are there as proof. One glance at the recent Golden Globes ceremony reveals all there is to know about the punishing gym regimes and starvation diets that many subject themselves to.

As the television presenter Claire Sweeny discovered when she visited a Hollywood plastic surgeon for her recent documentary, My Big Fat Diet, the average Tinseltown bod is a worryingly tiny US size 2 or UK size 6.

But the final straw is surely that the outfits have become dull and contrived. And let's not forget the hair and make-up - and therefore the many opportunities to ruin a perfectly good dress.

Notable fashion moments have never exactly been ten a penny in Hollywood. When actresses aren't poured into some ghastly fishtail dress, they're often so boringly “good taste” as to render them some of the most joyless dressers in the Western world.

Of course there are the occasional winners, such as Helen Mirren in that Christian Lacroix couture frock at the Oscars last year, but they are few and far between. After all, very few actresses can prove that chic, elegant and utterly fabulous can be found in one who covers up.

Let them eat couture?

Cripes, just when you thought that John Galliano wouldn't resurrect his historical mishmash of Marie Antoinette and the bucolic life, he was at it again with references to Little Bo Beep and swishy, multi-tiered gowns, below left. This is a designer who lives in a time warp, so alongside the 18th-century bustiers, were examples of Forties dirndl skirts and nipped-at-the-waist jackets in jarringly bright shades of tomato red and canary yellow. It was one heck of a dose of fin-de siècle exuberance. Perhaps it was all rather prescient. Galliano's couture collection, after all, was presented on the day that 70,000 people around the world lost their jobs. One couldn't help thinking of the Franco-Austrian queen and those angry mobs waiting to storm the Bastille. A case perhaps of history repeating itself?

Over at Chanel, there was little that owed anything to the 18th century if you were willing to look beyond the heavily ornamental headdresses, below right, and Leonard (Marie Antoinette's hairdresser) up-dos. The outfits in Sixties monochrome block shapes were demure, beautifully encrusted and managed to channel a Jackie O/Michelle O White House chic. Michelle may have a coterie of hip New Yorkers to dress her, but when she turns to Europe, no prizes for guessing that Lagerfeld will be first in line.

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