It was clear from the sparingly-applied orna­men­ta­tion that the peo­ple of Haiti were on the minds of Golden Globe atten­dees last night. And if you haven’t yet given what­ever you can to the Red Cross or any one of the emergency-relief orga­ni­za­tions seek­ing imme­di­ate fund­ing, please do! They need it most urgently now. Make this a life les­son for your chil­dren. When each of our three teenage boys heard that their par­ents had given money to these efforts, they inde­pen­dently and vol­un­tar­ily (and with­out inform­ing us until after­ward) donated from their own hard-earned sav­ings. A very proud moment in the Gross household.

Ok, and now for the show…

Given the dis­play of restraint, there were still a few bright spots, many of which would trans­late nicely to us civil­ians. Hands down Julia Roberts won the evening jewel-wise. She wore an absolutely incred­i­ble 1972 Van Cleef & Arpels eighteen-carat yel­low gold and cit­rine neck­lace with a sexy, petite-noir YSL dress. The look appeared effort­less, nat­ural, yet respect­fully appro­pri­ate given the zeit­geist of the evening. Loved the fact that Halle Berry, Jane Krakowski and direc­tor, Kathryn Bigelow were wear­ing pieces by geode-splicing Kim­berly McDon­ald; her work is very well exe­cuted and has an edgy indi­vid­u­al­ity rarely seen on the red car­pet. Courteney Cox played to her strengths in an extremely flat­ter­ing Vic­to­ria Beck­ham gown and deep brown Lor­raine Schwartz drop ear­rings. Carey Mulligan’s bril­liant head­band read refined ingenue; a nice touch that placed the focus on her adorable short do. Cal­ista Flock­hart made a defin­i­tive case for pearls — who­ever chose the color of the strand she wore had a superla­tive eye for sub­tlety — they under­scored the creami­ness of her skin to per­fec­tion and in a way the cam­era could cel­e­brate. Two understated-but-smouldering awards should go to Jen­nifer Anis­ton and Kris­ten Bell. Bell’s for her fit­ted VCA Folie de Pres neck­lace and her short, daz­zling white Jas­mine Di Milo dress, and Anis­ton in gold jew­elry and a black Valentino gown, a slightly less for­mal look, that proved the sen­su­ous­ness of yel­low metal. Tina Fey, one of my writ­ing heros, gets kudos for keep­ing real and wear­ing what suited her per­sonal style — a plucky Zac Posen with a Dior’s New Look vibe, and fit­ted yet gen­er­ous dia­mond earrings.

As for those who needed tweak­ing, well, I’ve been called to the mat recently for my can­dor so I’ll keep it as tact­ful I can here. The gor­geous Amy Adams should have rethought the brooch from Car­olina Herrera’s per­sonal col­lec­tion. I com­pletely under­stand what she was attempt­ing with the jabot pin, and I com­mend the effort. How­ever, the place­ment was off. When she turned side­ways it made it look as though a part of her anatomy was tipped in gold — a kind of Janet Jack­son wardrobe mal­func­tion with­out the dis­garded wardrobe. I would have rec­om­mended that the orna­ment be placed sim­i­larly, just higher up towards the shoulder.

All the asym­met­ri­cal neck­lines were lovely but why every­one felt the need to com­pletely divert the atten­tion to the wrist (far too many bracelets and/or ban­gles) or wear no jew­elry at all, was dis­ap­point­ing. Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal, who could not have worn that sculpted vision of pink bet­ter, went fairly bare; the sin­gle bracelet too tame for such inven­tive­ness. I also greatly admired Juliana Mar­gulies in her well-chosen Nar­ciso Rodriguez, and as she stated she kept the jew­elry sim­ple with a, “less as more” approach. Ok, but… small and slight is not nec­es­sar­ily less on the red car­pet, and it cer­tainly wasn’t more with the strong archi­tec­ture of the gown. She could have done a fab­u­lous, fit­ted ear­ring with­out upturn­ing her stream­lined look. Last but not least, Mariah Carey, whose jewel style I have admired here in pre­vi­ous sea­sons. That reveal of décolletage deserved far more elab­o­rate jew­els. If you are going to dress diva, then please go the whole way, not half. May West’s style as a buxom beauty included a slather­ing of dia­monds, opera singers have always dressed their dra­matic tal­ent in a show of gems, both fine and faux. Carey’s cur­va­ceous attrib­utes would have been bet­ter framed with jew­els of pro­por­tion­ate pres­ence. The lack of bal­ance is what brought her look to a halt­ing objection.

On another note: The folks at Philip Stein sent over one of their new Fruitz watches for me to try out their “nat­ural fre­quency tech­nol­ogy” which accord­ing to the com­pany, “… encom­passes the chief res­o­nant fre­quency of the nat­ural earth and is a fre­quency that is har­mo­nious and ground­ing to life… and con­sumers have reported bet­ter sleep, less stress, clearer focus and bet­ter con­cen­tra­tion when wear­ing Philip Stein watches…” The com­pany intro­duced it “elec­tro­mag­netic tech­nol­ogy” watches in 2003, and devel­oped their “nat­ural fre­quency tech­nol­ogy” in 2008. I’m wear­ing the white peach ver­sion for the first time today. Style-wise the watch is really cute, if not stream­lined (sporty would be a bet­ter word). It has a Japan­ese made quartz move­ment, comes in deli­cious col­ors with coor­di­nat­ing rub­ber bands, dis­plays a large, easy-to-read round face and lays com­fort­ably on the wrist. The all-white watch I’ve got on my wrist right now is equally attrac­tive, if not a lit­tle chic. I can­not tell if the “nat­ural fre­quency tech­nol­ogy” is work­ing yet — or at all. I’ll give it another day or two before I decide. I’m sure stress will find me by Wednes­day. I was won­der­ing, though, in order to get a bet­ter night’s sleep, do I have to wear the watch overnight? Hmmm… that would be a deal breaker. I am very selec­tive as to my bejew­eled bed part­ners. What kind of girl do you think I am anyway?