Plunging Ahead

There wasn’t much suspense at Sunday night’s VH1-Vogue Fashion Awards in New York. But there was plenty of overdone decolletage. So everyone knew who was going to win? Well, at least it was entertaining to guess who was likely to fall out of her dress.

Due to a snafu with Vogue’s distributor, embargoed copies of the magazine’s December issue were released early, complete with a list of winners, which the New York Post gleefully reprinted on Saturday.

This accounted for the blase attitude on the part of presenters such as Madonna, who announced in a tone as flat as a supermodel, “Oh, my God, the suspense is killing me,” before announcing Rupert Everett as most stylish male celebrity.

“I knew we were gonna win ‘cause I read it in Vogue magazine this morning,” said an apparently underwhelmed Shirley Manson of Garbage, the visionary video winner.

The most discernible trend at the show, hosted by Heather Locklear and Sean “Puffy” Combs, is not one that ordinary women are likely to embrace: gowns with fronts slashed to the waistline, or shirts unbuttoned to the belts with string bikini tops showing.

Many an observer was left marveling about how women such as most fashionable female artist winner Jennifer Lopez (who has reportedly insured her biggest asset--her body--for a cool billion) managed to stay decent given the gaping necklines. Must be some new kind of glue on the market.

Vogue’s readers chose Tom Ford of Gucci as women’s wear designer of the year and Alexander McQueen as avant-garde designer of the year.

As presenter Lil’ Kim, successor to Cher’s legacy of weird headgear, put it: “Avant garde is French for, ‘Girl, what the hell are you wearing?’ ”

That’s what we were wondering, too.