It was fashion’s version of the perfect storm: just months after the launch of InStyle, the American magazine that made a fetish out of tracking what celebrities were wearing, relative Hollywood neophyte and Best Supporting Actress nominee Uma Thurman attended the 1995 Oscars wearing minimalist lilac Prada. Together, they changed the red carpet rules forever. That night Thurman won the spotlight, if not the award (for her performance in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction). But the next day she had the front pages, and in the process both she and a niche Italian brand became a lot more famous than either had anticipated. If Giorgio Armani’s arrival in Hollywood as couturier to the stars in 1988 marked the incursion of good taste into the land of glitz, the Thurman/Prada combo introduced the concept of high fashion, and, even more, the marketing value of the red carpet, to the information-hungry world.

The idea that an almost unknown actress would wear an equally unknown fashion label led to curiosity about what other actresses were wearing. Famous or not so famous, they were all potential style setters, and thus fodder for the paparazzi and the tabloids they fed. In the right dress, anyone could become a household name overnight – and so could the maker of that dress.

Suddenly every Oscar nominee, presenter and hanger-on was looking not for the safe, studio-sanctioned option, not for the shocking option, but for the chic option. Designers were looking right back. The fashion world took suites in hotels all over Beverly Hills the better to tout their wares; actresses played hard and then harder to get; best- and worst-dressed lists proliferated. The concept of the celebrity stylist was born.

And so we find ourselves in a world where starlets such as Nicole Ritchie and Mischa Barton are more famous for what they wear than what they do, and executives at luxury clothing companies bite their nails to the quick waiting to find out how the writers’ strike pans out. Pulp fiction? Not on your life.