NEW YORK - Fast-forward to the morning after the Academy Awards. What are we talking about? Not the winners for best score or art direction, and probably not the best director or even best picture. We're talking about who looked great, who looked sexy, who had a fashion emergency.

The red carpet really is the show, says Joan Rivers, who dishes this stuff with daughter Melissa Rivers each year as E! TV's resident fashionistas.

Their commentaries have made the mother-daughter duo the most sought-after and most feared women on the awards circuit. It's a Catch-22 for the stars: If they stop to chat, they risk ridicule. If they don't, they could miss great exposure and even a Golden Hanger Award, the prize the Rivers women bestow on stars they feel are style-worthy.

Rivers's advice to celebrities: Don't take her comments so seriously.

All we do is a job. We never do it with malice, we do it with humour. And people making $20 million a picture shouldn't care that I don't think they should be wearing a bustier, she says.

We just say what we would always say to each other about who's wearing what and who looks good, but now we just do it in front of the camera, adds her daughter.

Melissa Rivers, 33, says that mega-watt stars have whispered in confidence that they picked out their dresses with the commentaries in mind.

She calls her mother a temperamental talent. She agrees.

During a recent conference-call interview - Rivers lives in New York, her daughter in Los Angeles - the mother and daughter turned their collective critical eye on themselves.

Since they began hosting the awards pre-shows in 1995, Rivers says her biggest style blunder was a pink dress with big ruffles.

That dress has continually come back to haunt me. I had my picture taken with Mel Gibson in it, and it's up on the wall at E!.

And Melissa Rivers, whose son Cooper was born six weeks before this year's Golden Globes, says she has been exercising and dieting day-in, day-out so the camera won't show extra pounds. While Rivers has been planning since January to wear a Vera Wang gown to the Academy Awards on March 25, her daughter is waiting to see what parts of my body are usable by then.

Lately, Melissa Rivers has looked to younger designers like Christina Perrin to branch out from the standard awards look. Rivers sticks by her favourites, including Wang, Oscar de la Renta, Valentino and Carolina Herrera.

I'm at the age when I ask, 'What else can I hide?' I try to be hip and age-appropriate, which makes it very difficult for the designers I work with.

So how old is she?

People magazine says I'm 67. US says I'm 63. Take an average.

Rivers, who worked for Lord & Taylor department stores before launching a comedy career that landed her on stage, TV and in movies, says she's old enough to miss the days when the big studios helped stars get ready for the Oscars.

Studios knew that getting out of the car is like a curtain going up, she says. But now, when magazines and television devote more time than ever to awards-show fashion, few stars understand the value of a fabulous gown.

Those who do are rewarded.

Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock and Minnie Driver always look like stars, and Drew Barrymore and Kate Hudson are among the next generation of trendsetters, mother and daughter agree. But, they say, no one does the red carpet better than Sharon Stone.

Sharon Stone took what could've been an average career and turned into a superstar. Her clothes and her presence are a part of that, says Rivers.

If a star clearly isn't going to make the best-dressed list, Rivers, who won a Daytime Emmy in 1990 for her self-titled talk show, advises that it is better to be the worst dressed or most outrageously dressed because in Hollywood, any publicity is better than none at all.

We live in a world where you can be on the front page of the New York Times with a dress made of American Express cards, but Meryl Streep, probably the greatest actress of our time, can't get her picture in the paper, she says.

Live From The Red Carpet: The 2001 Academy Awards airs March 25 on E! in the U.S. from 6-8 p.m. ET.