Star has final say on style

Associated Press

MAKEUP JUNKIE: Catherine Zeta-Jones, who admits she is a makeup junkie, makes sure she looks her best at a ribbon cutting ceremony for the flagship store of Elizabeth Arden on New York.

Associated Press

NEW YORK — There’s yet another armchair fashion critic who is getting bored with all the picture-perfect celebrities on the red carpet: Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Yes, she always tries to look her best, especially when she knows she’s going to be photographed, she says, but she doesn’t want to look like a cookie-cutter star either.

“What’s with the ponytail at the Oscars?” she wonders aloud.

Zeta-Jones says that while she loves to have someone else do her hair, she likes to pick her own clothes and especially her own makeup. And if she does have a makeup artist, it’s Zeta-Jones who gets the final word.

“I’ll direct them and then I’ll do the last fiddle. I like when they’re done to put the last bit of lipstick on,” says Zeta-Jones, who was in New York earlier recently to cut the ribbon on the renovated Elizabeth Arden Red Door store and spa on Fifth Avenue. The landmark building in Midtown has been home to Arden since 1930.

The star of “Chicago” and “No Reservations” is the brand’s spokeswoman, and she easily admits to being a makeup junkie — with false eyelashes as one of her favorite items.

“Style is such a personal thing and you need it in this business,” she says.

Her biggest fashion challenge is staying away from black. (On this day, she’s in a slim-cut blue dress with a wide black patent-leather belt.)

She has learned not always to wear a full-length dress, even for a formal affair. “You know, I’ve got a pretty good pair of pins,” says the 38-year-old actress with a laugh.