This Week: A Laundry List
Clothes — from beaded gowns to lacy briefs — took the spotlight this week as the Hollywood awards season began in earnest.
The highlight was Tuesday night's People's Choice Awards, which saw luminaries from music, movies and TV vie for awards as fan favorites. The stars wore their red-carpet best, but all they talked about was underwear.
Everyone from Jennifer Aniston to Robin Williams made panty jokes — all at the expense of pop diva Britney Spears, whose panty-less partying has been making headlines for weeks.
Even Madonna, in the U.S. to promote her animated film "Arthur and the Invisibles," put her spin on the controversy when she appeared on "The Late Show With David Letterman." When the talk-show host reminded Madonna about the time she brought him a pair of her underpants as a gift and told the singer that he still had them, she suggested he might send them to Spears.
Mr. Blackwell put Britney and her party pal Paris Hilton through the wringer when he called them "style-free and fashion deprived" and put them at the top of his 47th annual "Worst Dressed" list. His fashion hits included Kate Winslet, Angelina Jolie and Helen Mirren, as well as singers Barbra Streisand and Beyonce.Photos: Fan Favorites
Rosie O'Donnell and Donald Trump continued to air their dirty linen in public with new jabs about each other, drawing Trump's daughter, Ivanka, and O'Donnell's boss, Barbara Walters, into the fray.
Their let-it-all-hang–out battle style was in sharp contrast to the buttoned-up demeanor of separating pairs Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn and Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake. Aniston and Vaughn thanked one another when each accepted a People's Choice award. Diaz and Timberlake confirmed their split only to clean up what they said were rumors and false reports.
Los Angeles was in a lather over the impending arrival of Britain's David and Victoria Beckham. David, the fashion-savvy soccer star, has signed with with the Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer and will be moving there with his fashionista wife, the former Posh Spice of the Spice Girls. The two are expected to brighten up soccer news and future red carpets.
It looks like beauty queen Katie Rees will be stripped of more than her title. Rees, who was dethroned as Miss Nevada after racy photos of her surfaced on the Internet, is reportedly negotiating a spread in Playboy magazine.
And TV viewers learned about 19 visitors to Fiji who won't be packing any party clothes in their luggage. They are heading there to vie for $1 million in the next season of "Survivor."
Finally, some bargain hunters in New Jersey scooped up clothes and gear that once belonged to Grammy winner Whitney Houston. They were put on the auction block after the singer had fallen about $175,000 behind on storage fees for several tons of concert gear. The clothing included spangled designer gowns, velvet catsuits — and, yes, underwear.
By Mary Jayne McKay