Stand tall like Gwyneth Paltrow

Forever emerald ... Julianne Moore. Photograph: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

If it works for you, stick to it Julianne Moore’s colouring looks fantastic in emerald green. Jennifer Aniston’s shoulders look awesome in halternecks. Neither of them are afraid to reprise a formula that works. There is a misguided narcissism at the heart of the idea that you can’t wear a black jumpsuit to Lucy’s birthday party because you wore one to Nina’s Christmas drinks. Your eveningwear wardrobe is unlikely to be constantly on the mind of anyone else, however much they love you. There are many issues to be negotiated when getting dressed, but boring other people is an imaginary problem.

Cape crusader ... Gwyneth Paltrow in Tom Ford gown at the 2012 Oscars. Photograph: Dan MacMedan/WireImage

Timeless = good. Old-fashioned = bad My all-time least-favourite red carpets to write about are the ones when I feel like I’ve slipped through a snag in the time-space continuum and landed in 1961. Silver screen glamour is boring and wet and irrelevant if you don’t bring it up to date. This is not about wearing trainers on the red carpet, it’s about referencing modern style in an elegant way. My all-time favourite example of this is the Tom Ford white caped gown that Gwyneth Paltrow wore to the Oscars in 2012. It looked like she was shoulder-robing the cape, which brought a fabulously Wintour-esque front-row moment to the red carpet. See also: Cara Delevingne in a little black dress with a diamond ear cuff.

Poise ... Carey Mulligan. Photograph: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

Your mum was right. Stand up straight! Seriously, this drives me insane. Keira Knightley: fabulous, talented, stylish, but sticks her head forward like a duck. The Duchess of Cambridge: beautiful, enviable height, but ruins it with that round-shouldered slouch. At the other extreme: pageant poses makes you look like an idiot. The one-leg-forward pose jumped the shark with Angelina Jolie at the 2012 Oscars. Reese Witherspoon’s beauty queen hand-on-hips posing, still in evidence at last week’s Screen Actors’ Guild awards, is lagging badly behind her awesome modern-Hollywood-feminist vibe. For tips, study Gwyneth Paltrow (simple, graceful) and Carey Mulligan (as Paltrow, but with an Alexa Chung ankle-crossed thing going on, for extra hipster points). See more at  formal dresses online australia