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"  I&amp;#039;ve had many opportunities to make first impressions, but the most unexpected came in 2001, when I was called in to audition for a movie. The previous year I&amp;#039;d made my first foray into film, consulting on the &amp;quot;supermalemodel fashion looks&amp;quot; in Ben Stiller&amp;#039;s Zoolander. A year later, a casting director called: Would I read for the part of Reese Witherspoon&amp;#039;s assistant in Sweet Home Alabama? A Zoolander producer had recommended me; I didn&amp;#039;t have much day-to-day contact with this person, but I guess my look was memorable. My first response was, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m sorry, did you mean to call someone else? I&amp;#039;m a fashion editor.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Nope,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re the one we&amp;#039;re trying to reach. Can I fax you the sides?&amp;quot; (Sides? What are sides?) I really had no desire to act but thought the experience would make for good cocktail-party chatter. So I agreed. &amp;quot;Fax me the sides,&amp;quot; I said. Sides, it turns out, are the portions of scripts used for auditions. When they arrived, I saw that I&amp;#039;d play the overachieving Asian fashion-victim assistant to Reese&amp;#039;s designer. So, okay, on paper it made sense. Except for the I&amp;#039;m-not-an-actor thing. I called everyone I knew for advice. Should I dress like the character? Or just be myself? Should I project confidence or na\u00EFvet\u00E9? Basically, I didn&amp;#039;t want to be the guy dressed like a banana at the American Idol audition. I needed to make a great first impression.  So in a small way\u2014very small\u2014I can commiserate with the characters played by Katharine McPhee and Megan Hilty on the NBC hit Smash. In this drama about mounting a Broadway musical based on Marilyn Monroe&amp;#039;s life, these girls compete for the lead role. Regular readers know how much I love song and dance\u2014and my love for this show is off the charts\u2014but it&amp;#039;s the anxiety of waiting and wanting that job that endeared these characters to me even more.  On Smash, Ivy (Hilty) and Karen (McPhee) take very different approaches to the challenge of making a killer first impression: Ivy arrives in head-to-toe classic Marilyn mode, while Karen forgoes the bombshell look altogether. By now, viewers know who scores the role\u2014and I won&amp;#039;t ruin it for those who are still catching up\u2014but ultimately that first impression proves to be the lasting one. And anyone, actor or not, can relate to that. Will what you wear help you land the job\u2014or the man\u2014the first time you meet? It can&amp;#039;t hurt. This month, the lovely ladies of Smash give us their best first impressions, for auditions and beyond. And, P.S.: No, I didn&amp;#039;t dress in character for my Sweet Home Alabama audition, nor did I get the role, but not because of looks (or my bad acting). In the end, they rewrote the character as a girl. Click here to see the looks! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/a11903/a-to-zee-joe-dresses-the-cast-of-smash-652749/>