Night of a Thousand Knockoffs

To her readers, those stars possess an appeal far more democratic than that of the supermodels of a decade ago. "Celebrities come in all shapes and sizes," Mr. Fuller said. "There is someone on that red carpet every woman can identify with."

Women's ardor for red-carpet fashion has manufacturers redoubling their efforts to ship reproductions to customers at demon speed. The most agile expect to deliver near-duplicates of Ms. Witherspoon's silver-trimmed white Dior , Ms. Knightley's purple silk Vera Wang confection, Ms. Thurman's shapely white Versace chiffon and Ms. Alba's molten gold Versace mermaid dress to their customers in as little as two to four weeks, only half the time of five years ago.

"A lot of this business is driven by the fantasy of the moment," Ms. Stoner said. "Our customers want that dress within a few weeks or a couple of months at best. If it's three months old, maybe they don't want it."

From left, Charlize Theron, Jennifer Aniston and Felicity Huffman.

Tor Sweeney, the president of Dresses.com, which specializes in evening wear, predicted that he would be fielding hundreds of telephone calls and e-mail messages from customers clamoring for Oscar reproductions to wear to a prom, a wedding or cocktail party only weeks away. "The biggest question we get from our customers is how quickly can you get me that," he said.

From left, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Noah Baumbach, Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock.

Mr. Sweeney keeps his eye on reliable hit-makers like Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston, Nicole Kidman and Hilary Swank, whose red-carpet choices have resonated with viewers over the years. Interpretations of this year's most coveted gowns will be up on his Web site in just over a week.

Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry, left, and Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith.

"People will buy them sight unseen from the Internet," he said, adding that he expects to deliver within two weeks of the Oscar broadcast. He credits a quick turnaround with having boosted sales by 20 percent in each of the two previous years, to about $8 million this year.

From left, Rachel Weisz, Hilary Swank, Queen Latifah and the Italian actress Giovanna Mezzogiorno.

The uncontested champion of red-carpet knockoffs, ABS by Allen Schwartz, is reporting a similar increase, partly a result of rushing deliveries to stores like Bloomingdale's, Macy's, Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom, which will begin carrying them in May. "Our samples are being sewn right now," said Susan Hosen, the director of sales for the company.

From left, Salma Hayek, Dame Judi Dench and Taraji P. Henson, who performed the song "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" from "Hustle & Flow."

Though ABS and its competitors specialize in replicating designer originals by Dior, Versace, Michael Kors and, say, Vera Wang, those copies are subtly altered to the tastes, and the measure, of a mainstream consumer.

"Not everyone is a size 2," Ms. Hosen said, "so we might raise a neckline or change the fit by adding zippers, bust darts and little nip and tucks here and there."

Mr. Sweeney similarly pointed out that the waistlines of several of this year's form-fitting dresses will be dropped or tweaked to accommodate a greater range of sizes.

In a business that is only casually regulated by copyright laws, the steady proliferation of red-carpet adaptations can rankle. Dinesh Chandrasena, the designer of Claire's Collection, an evening-wear line based in Los Angeles and sold primarily on the Web, concedes that the Oscar gowns inspire her. "But we don't encourage the whole copycat thing," said Ms. Chandrasena, whose $2,000 to $4,000 dresses have been worn by the likes of Halle Berry.

"This is a huge industry, and there is always room for interpretation," she said. "But at any price point you can be creative. You don't need to bottom-feed off what the stars are wearing."

Consumers, on the other hand, are rarely troubled by such scruples. "Most of our readers see no problem in wearing a copy," Ms. Fuller said. Magazines like Star and Us Weekly implicitly encourage the consumption of knockoffs, which are showcased in the magazines after the awards shows, alongside the originals.

Among Star magazine's more than nine million readers, "we have a group who can afford and will buy the real thing," Ms. Fuller insisted, "and a larger group that looks to the Oscar dresses for inspiration and will be happy to get a much less pricey copy."

"If they felt there was some stigma to all this, there wouldn't be a business," she said.