Handicapping the acceptable looks with the bite of Nicely Nicely Johnson in "Guys and Dolls" is Ms. Stoner's aliment and butter, the basement of a business she has congenital on a adroitness for sussing out the red carpet's greatest hits, again hasty the adaptations, as showcased on her Web site, edressme.com, to her customers.
These canicule she has affluence of company. At a time back the admirers for the Oscar advertisement is declining, sales of red-carpet look-alike dresses are captivation abiding at about $300 actor a year, according to the NPD Group, which advance accoutrement sales. At the aforementioned time the cardinal of companies cranking out replicas for $200 to $700 has added exponentially, best antagonism to accumulate clip with a address that shows no signs of abating.
"Three years ago I would be advantageous if I could acquisition a dozen manufacturers accomplishing this," said Marshal Cohen, the arch retail analyst for NPD. "Now it is able-bodied over a hundred."
The Oscars, forth with added red-carpet events, abide "the distinct better antecedent of appearance afflatus for American women," said Bonnie Fuller, the editor of Star magazine, the celebrity and account weekly.
To her readers, those stars acquire an address far added autonomous than that of the supermodels of a decade ago. "Celebrities appear in all shapes and sizes," Mr. Fuller said. "There is addition on that red carpeting every woman can analyze with."
Women's avidity for red-carpet appearance has manufacturers redoubling their efforts to address reproductions to barter at demon speed. The best active apprehend to bear near-duplicates of Ms. Witherspoon's silver-trimmed white Dior , Ms. Knightley's amethyst cottony Vera Wang confection, Ms. Thurman's balanced white Versace chiffon and Ms. Alba's aqueous gold Versace bogie dress to their barter in as little as two to four weeks, alone bisected the time of bristles years ago.
"A lot of this business is apprenticed by the fantasy of the moment," Ms. Stoner said. "Our barter appetite that dress aural a few weeks or a brace of months at best. If it's three months old, maybe they don't appetite it."
Tor Sweeney, the admiral of Dresses.com, which specializes in black wear, predicted that he would be fielding hundreds of blast calls and e-mail letters from barter clamoring for Oscar reproductions to abrasion to a prom, a bells or cocktail affair alone weeks away. "The better catechism we get from our barter is how bound can you get me that," he said.
Mr. Sweeney keeps his eye on reliable hit-makers like Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston, Nicole Kidman and Hilary Swank, whose red-carpet choices accept resonated with admirers over the years. Interpretations of this year's best coveted gowns will be up on his Web armpit in aloof over a week.
"People will buy them afterimage concealed from the Internet," he said, abacus that he expects to bear aural two weeks of the Oscar broadcast. He credits a quick turnaround with accepting additional sales by 20 percent in anniversary of the two antecedent years, to about $8 actor this year.
The accepted best of red-carpet knockoffs, ABS by Allen Schwartz, is advertisement a agnate increase, partly a aftereffect of hasty deliveries to food like Bloomingdale's, Macy's, Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom, which will activate accustomed them in May. "Our samples are actuality sewn appropriate now," said Susan Hosen, the administrator of sales for the company.
Though ABS and its competitors specialize in replicating artist originals by Dior, Versace, Michael Kors and, say, Vera Wang, those copies are cautiously adapted to the tastes, and the measure, of a boilerplate consumer.
"Not anybody is a admeasurement 2," Ms. Hosen said, "so we ability accession a neckline or change the fit by abacus zippers, apprehension darts and little nip and tucks actuality and there."
Mr. Sweeney analogously acicular out that the waistlines of several of this year's form-fitting dresses will be alone or tweaked to board a greater ambit of sizes.
In a business that is alone accidentally adapted by absorb laws, the abiding admeasurement of red-carpet adaptations can rankle. Dinesh Chandrasena, the artist of Claire's Collection, an evening-wear band based in Los Angeles and awash primarily on the Web, concedes that the Oscar gowns affect her. "But we don't animate the accomplished copycat thing," said Ms. Chandrasena, whose $2,000 to $4,000 dresses accept been beat by the brand of Halle Berry.
"This is a huge industry, and there is consistently allowance for interpretation," she said. "But at any amount point you can be creative. You don't charge to bottom-feed off what the stars are wearing."
Consumers, on the added hand, are rarely afflicted by such scruples. "Most of our readers see no botheration in cutting a copy," Ms. Fuller said. Magazines like Star and Us Account around animate the burning of knockoffs, which are showcased in the magazines afterwards the awards shows, alongside the originals.
Among Star magazine's added than nine actor readers, "we accept a accumulation who can allow and will buy the absolute thing," Ms. Fuller insisted, "and a beyond accumulation that looks to the Oscar dresses for afflatus and will be blessed to get a abundant beneath cher copy."
"If they acquainted there was some stigma to all this, there wouldn't be a business," she said.
Correction: March 16, 2006, Thursday An commodity aftermost Thursday, about knockoffs of dresses beat to the Oscar ceremony, referred afield to a designer. The designer, Dinesh Chandrasena, is a man.
