Rachel McAdams in Lor­raine Schwartz earrings

Carey Mul­li­gan in Fred Leighton 19^th cen­tury earrings

Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal in Fred Leighton vin­tage earrings

Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal in Fred Leighton vin­tage bracelet

Vera Farmiga in Fred Leighton

Amanda Seyfried in Lor­raine Schwartz bracelets

Eliz­a­beth Banks in Fred Leighton

For putting on the show well into the first hour! I was among the 3.1 mil­lion view­ers with­out the Oscar tele­cast and believe you me, I was scram­bling to find cov­er­age some­how, some­where, with­out hav­ing to drag my hus­band to a local bar with a satel­lite dish. I wasn’t rel­ish­ing the thought of hav­ing to take notes while try­ing to keep bal­ance on a bar stool, and nurse a sin­gle glass of wine for four hours. Four looong hours, I might add. Loved the two Mas­ters of Cer­e­mony  – keep them — and shorten the rest for next time.

As I hope some of you heard this morn­ing when I was on Morn­ing Liv­ing (my sixth guest appear­ance, I’m very proud to say!), there was a rever­sal of for­tune on the red car­pet. For­tune, mean­ing the rar­i­fied jew­elry that com­monly accom­pa­nies all the cou­ture worn by celebri­ties. The big, bold and brash was replaced by the mostly small­ish, sim­pler, and in some cases, sweet.  Except for Ms. Mariah Carey who main­tained her bling-bling diva sta­tus and yet, kept things a lit­tle less con­spic­u­ous than she did for the Golden Globes. I even liked her use of the dia­mond brooch at the hip — kind of a cool touch. There were a few dra­matic moments, and some trends that could be adapted to civil­ian life too — which if you heard my seg­ment this morn­ing, are not dif­fi­cult to emu­late.  I wel­come your style ques­tions, espe­cially ones that I can reprint and answer here on the blog so that every­one can ben­e­fit. These are images of the best red car­pet jew­elry moments:

Jen­nifer Lopez wear­ing Cartier earrings

Demi Moore wear­ing Van Cleef & Arpels vin­tage bracelets

Sarah Jes­sica Parker in Fred Leighton bracelets