10 best Oscar dresses of all time

LOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES: Actress Julia Roberts holds her Oscar for Best Actress for her role in ‘Erin Brokovich’ at the 73rd Annual Academy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles 25 March, 2001. AFP PHOTO Timothy A. CLARY/mn (Photo credit should read TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images)

Right before Hollywood’s biggest night, we present to you this list of the 10 best Oscar dresses of all time. All time, people!

The Oscar dress – a chance for a celebrity to show off her (or her stylist’s) impeccable taste that will, inevitably, match the gold statue that she’s worked her whole lifetime to achieve. On the night of the Academy Awards, starlets of all shapes and sizes will strut their stuff, and will be the subject of countless speculation posts – and, of course, E!’s Fashion Police, which has lost much of its bite since Joan Rivers passed away – if their dresses aren’t up to par.

But what, really, makes an “iconic” dress? And how do you come up with a list of the 10 best Oscar dresses of all time?

To come up with this answer, we decided to hold our choices to three criteria. First, we asked if the dress flattered its wearer. The size, shape, and color didn’t matter – what mattered was how the actress in question rocked the gown. Second, we asked how the dress was received by others. A dress didn’t have to be featured on the cover of Vogue to be well-received – it only had to be applauded by most the people at the time in which the actress wore it. Finally, we asked if the dress was still remembered – or, at least, referenced – years after the fact. If the mere mention of the actress’s name is enough to invoke memories of the dress, it got included on the list.

With that in mind, we’ve come up with this list of the 10 best Oscar dresses of all time.