Fashion is a workhorse in this context

Many of the Golden Globe winners Sunday night are talented, but they’re also very glamorous. Most of the female nominees and presenters are regularly among the top fashion vote-getters — Angelina Jolie, Anne Hathaway, Nicole Kidman, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams — and some of them have had contracts with major fashion houses, as Natalie Portman, who won for “Black Swan,” does with Dior. And I expect to see all their Globes pictures splashed across European gossip magazines next week during the Paris couture shows. That’s the payoff that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association expects.

Fashion is a workhorse in this context. Annette Bening may have had on a great-looking Tom Ford lace column, but her un-coiffeur and horn rims seemed almost calculated to avoid inclusion in the usual post-show mop-up of trends. She won for a fine little movie, she seems to have a nice family, and she’s married to Warren Beatty. Why agonize over the rest? I loved Robert De Niro’s wise and funny speech about the hypocrisies of the business — yes, the guy who made “Raging Bull” and “The Godfather” also made “The Fockers” and, yes, he did it for the money — with Matt Damon’s wry take on self-involved, culturally illiterate stars.

Despite the time and attention designers give to the Globes red carpet, you can never be sure how things will turn out. I think this was a pretty good fashion night. There was variety in terms of design and color — all those shades of pink and the surprise of emerald on Ms. Jolie, Mila Kunis and others — and I thought with few exceptions the women and the gowns seemed well matched. There were also fewer frozen heads — that is, a number of women including Ms. Jolie, Ms. Kidman and Sandra Bullock, skipped the up-dos and wore their hair down and loose.

The amount of beadwork on the carpet did come as a surprise; I guess the Globes isn’t the relaxed evening it once was. Was there a short dress in the crowd? Halle Berry and January Jones kept things sexy and moderately daring, while Emma Stone, Claire Danes and Tilda Swinton (in Jil Sander) were widely praised for their minimalist looks. It was big night for the Calvin Klein company, which dressed Ms. Danes and Ms. Stone.

Over all, I thought Ms. Jolie, Ms. Hathaway and Ms. Portman had the most to offer carpet watchers — Ms. Jolie for her shrugged-on green Versace dress, Ms. Hathaway for the imposing cut of her Armani column and its welcomed long sleeves, and Ms. Portman because her cheery, rose-kissed Viktor & Rolf reflected her mood.

Helena Bonham Carter’s print-and-tulle dress was not so interesting in itself — a classic bit of Vivienne Westwood — but Ms. Carter, English and eccentric, seemed to understand its effect on her. Julianna Margulies picked a Saint Laurent gown, with a small black bodice and a draped pink skirt. Ms. Margulies rarely gets it wrong, and maybe the archive design looked better in person, but some greater pizzazz was needed to carry it off.