Best Dressed Men of the Night

The 2010 Academy Awards -- weren't they nice? Didn't they just leave you with that warm little feeling that life was easy to predict? Yes, all in all, it was a pleasant affair and perhaps with not a terrible amount to remember it by: any legendary moments in the making were so heavily pre-determined that the only shock of the night would have been if Kathryn Bigelow, Jeff Bridges or Sandra Bullock hadn't won. But they did, and if it was a safe year for picking winners, it was an even safer year for clothes.

Only a few household name designers showed up on the red carpet (with the exception of Cameron Diaz's Oscar De Le Renta gown, Kate Winslet's Yves Saint Laurent, and Zoe Saldana's late Jim Henson Muppet dress) in favor of lesser know designers and smaller statements. The boys too were unusually safe this year, a wash of penguin suits, making it a difficult, but certainly not impossible to pick, The Best Dressed Men of The Oscars 2010:

Tom Ford: You knew if he showed up he was going to look great. How could he not? His tux was masterfully fitted, the jacket running a little longer than most and creating a tight V collar and paired with a fashionably fuller bow tie and, nicest of all, and the only one to try it, a white flower fastened in his label.

George Clooney: I'm totally paraphrasing from one of those E! News reporters, but didn't George Clooney look so Hollywood? Clean-shaven and with his hair grown out just a tad, he's still such a staple as America's bachelor, that between all the reporters gushing over him like they were old friends, or the self-effacing winks and scowls he kept giving the audience camera as if they really were old friends, something in the evening would have been lost without Mr. Fox.

Zac Efron: EvenKelly Cutrone has admitted that Zac is always well-styled for the red carpet and she was right again as he showed up in a Cavin Klein suit, cut perfectly snug, especially in the pants, in a way that any older guests wouldn't have dared. His SoCal Anime hair was nicely balanced with the choice of a necktie over bow and a sharp pair of patent leather lace up shoes, showing he boy can still dress, and clearly blowing his competition among the young presenters, Taylor Lautner, out of the water.

Jeremy Renner: My dad said to include him on the list and so I shall. Renner did look great though, opting daringly for not just a necktie, but a silver one at that, and with just a little scruff, kept the look young and boyish and reminding us of the early days of his friend, Collin Farrell.

Colin Firth: If Tom Ford was going to be best dressed of the evening you know Colin was going to be second best. In his expertly cut tux, a little more understated than Tom's with a smaller bow tie and a wider jacket opening, we were taken back to his days as Mr. Darcy, and even presented with one of the fashion highlights on the night: When Colin unfastened his jacket to show Ryan Seacrest the inside label actually reading: 'Tom Ford for Colin Firth'. If that's not a badge of honor I don't know what is.

I didn't want to gush too much, but I do have a few runners up who surely deserve to be mentioned. These folks are here either because I couldn't decide if I liked them or not, or because they were simply so stunning that they would have over shadowed the rest: First is Robert Downey Jr.'s Blue Bow Tie - a kind of beautiful seaform, stormcloud cerulean that I never would have imagined showing up the way it did. Was it clever? Forward? A little too eccentric?

Next goes to the one break-dancer in that strange ensemble performance set against the year's best scores who decides to roll up in white pants into a pair of Man-Capri's. It's not easy to show your legs in March, especially not to a hall full of Hollywood's finest, so we salute you Dancer #27.

Lastly, and best of all, I would like to award that crazy red-haired lady, who Twitter dubbed, The Crazy Red Haired Lady, who interrupted that poor directors speech with such drunken passion wearing a draped shall of crushed purple velvet that we all had to stop and pray for a moment, "She's not a friend of our mother's, is she?"

-- ALEX WILBURN

Previously > Earning Your Oscar