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"I hate gowns. I hate them. It&amp;amp;#8217;s weird. I love fashion, but I never, even as a chubby Indian kid, wanted to look like a fairy princess. I&amp;amp;#8217;d rather look cool and hot than elegant and beautiful. I recognize these preferences are the result of self-preservation, because I have much more of a fighting chance to look cool or hot in jeans and a button-down than elegant and beautiful in some long gown with a train. I mean, when you think of me, what do you picture? Me in a flowing gown, dripping in jewelry on the red carpet? Or me in jeans and a pink hoodie, watching Real Housewives on the sofa, eating licorice? Don&amp;amp;#8217;t answer. It&amp;amp;#8217;s so obvious what the answer is. One of my best qualities is that I&amp;amp;#8217;m truly open to anything fashion-wise. One of my worst is that my skin is incredibly thin to criticism. These two traits do battle anytime I get dressed for a red-carpet event. In honor of the Oscars, let me take you on a little tour of my recent history. My Fashion Police moment Let&amp;amp;#8217;s look, for instance, at the dress I wore to the 2010 Emmys, at right, when I was co-nominated for best comedy writing with my boss Greg Daniels. Because there was a possibility I might go onstage, I hired a stylist to help me. Hiring a stylist basically means you go to an agency&amp;amp;#8217;s website and look at pictures of celebrities and models wearing outfits that the stylist has assembled. This activity in itself is a complete joy, obviously. I picked a stylist I&amp;amp;#8217;ll call Liza. She was an impossibly thin Debbie Harry look-alike who wore six-inch platform sandals. Liza arrived at my house on a Saturday morning with four racks containing hundreds of thousands of dollars&amp;amp;#8217; worth of gowns, jewelry and shoes. It was magical. They were just sitting there, all on the same wood floor where I played Rock Band badly. Trying on gowns is demoralizing. I&amp;amp;#8217;m smaller on top than I am on the bottom, so gowns rarely fit me well. So I picked my dress because it was easy to dance in. I figured if we won, I&amp;amp;#8217;d dance up a storm. I also wanted to look edgy and young, reveal some leg and showcase these gorgeous (and disgustingly expensive) Alexander McQueen shoes, which were black with purple rhinestones and had a heart-shaped toe opening. Usually for red-carpet events, I spend a sickening amount on shoes that remain hidden under the gown, and I&amp;amp;#8217;m like, &amp;amp;#8220;Why didn&amp;amp;#8217;t I just go to Aldo and buy $50 pumps? This is nuts.&amp;amp;#8221; Not this time! By the time I was in the limo with my best friend, Brenda, I started suspecting the dress was a mistake: Brenda couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t sit within three feet of me, because my dress took up the whole area. (At the ceremony, it overflowed into Greg&amp;amp;#8217;s seat, where he kept pushing it back until finally, he gave up, letting it cover his lap.) Yikes, right? In retrospect, it&amp;amp;#8217;s pretty amazing that I messed up a black dress. I usually don&amp;amp;#8217;t like to wear them because I think black is boring. Maybe because it&amp;amp;#8217;s the signature style of Supreme Court justices. Basically, you&amp;amp;#8217;re saying, &amp;amp;#8220;Don&amp;amp;#8217;t think of me sexually! I want to blend in.&amp;amp;#8221; Black dresses might be flattering and confidence-giving, but they are never memorable, unless you&amp;amp;#8217;re Angelina Jolie, in which case you could wear a Supreme Court robe and steal away a million husbands. But this little number does have historical significance. It inaugurated me into the club of people who&amp;amp;#8217;ve been mocked on the E! show Fashion Police, led by the reanimated corpse of Joan Rivers, who&amp;amp;#8217;s actually a very funny old bag of bones. She said I looked like I&amp;amp;#8217;d fallen out of Patti LaBelle&amp;amp;#8217;s nose and that I was wearing Snooki&amp;amp;#8217;s old prom dress. Even though it made me cry later that night, I had to admit that it was a funny thing to say. Right after Joan skewered me, I promised myself I&amp;amp;#8217;d wear only boring black shifts. But then a month after, I caught an episode of Fashion Police while I was working out at the gym. The judges just seemed kind of pitiful, and I thought, If anyone is going to scare me into dressing a certain way, it&amp;amp;#8217;s going to be someone formidable. So I stopped caring. Let the Fashion Police dis my outfits. I make my living taking risks and being creative; they make theirs scrutinizing creativity. Which would you rather do? Learn how Mindy scored major style points on the Golden Globes red carpet &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;#8220;I spent three weeks running intervals&amp;amp;#8221; for this dress, says Kaling of her 2009 Golden Globes look. &amp;amp;#8220;It was worth it.&amp;amp;#8221; My Golden Globes success story Canary yellow is my favorite color. Most people think it&amp;amp;#8217;s pink, because pink is the favorite of my character, Kelly, on The Office. And believe me, I have a deep, personal relationship with pink. But nothing gets me more excited than rocking deep canary yellow. So as soon as I saw this Gucci gown (left), I knew I had to wear it to the 2009 Golden Globes. It was a little tight in the hips, so I spent the next three weeks running intervals on the treadmill and eating lean proteins and vegetables, with a handful of berries as my &amp;amp;#8220;treat.&amp;amp;#8221; It was a pathetic and unhappy time during which I was endlessly grouchy. I recommend it to no one. But it was worth it for the gown. It is one of my favorite looks. I love one-shoulder gowns, even though this is the cut of choice for every Real Housewife, whether she&amp;amp;#8217;s throwing her toddler an insanely elaborate birthday party or going to get a face-lift. My close friend and Office costar Ellie Kemper got ready for the Golden Globes with me. We got our hair and makeup done at my house while listening to a mix I made that was simply alternating Rihanna and Beyonc&amp;amp;#233; songs. (Why would you listen to anything else?) We ate sushi, drank champagne and walked around in Spanx without feeling embarrassed. The gown cost serious money, and I don&amp;amp;#8217;t think I&amp;amp;#8217;ll ever wear it again, but I love it. Quentin Tarantino told me I looked pretty that night, so now I call it the Tarantino dress. I&amp;amp;#8217;m annoyed that the only photo I have of me in the Tarantino is in front of a dreadful black plastic backdrop that seems to be made entirely of garbage bags. But my body looks slammin&amp;amp;#8217;, and I&amp;amp;#8217;m smiling, and that&amp;amp;#8217;s all that matters. Speaking of which: the smiling conundrum. I have wonky teeth, full of gaps, and I always tell myself to do a classy, closemouthed smile, but in the end, I don&amp;amp;#8217;t have the willpower. I can&amp;amp;#8217;t help it. I mean, I&amp;amp;#8217;m literally on a Hollywood red carpet. That chubby Indian kid in me is beaming so hard I can&amp;amp;#8217;t not smile. I&amp;amp;#8217;ll just have to leave the cool &amp;amp;#8220;Why are you bothering me?&amp;amp;#8221; beauty scowl to Victoria Beckham. Check out Mindy&amp;amp;#8217;s ill-fated experiment with arm warmers &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; Arm warmers: always a Don&amp;amp;#8217;t Sometimes there are red-carpet events for things that aren&amp;amp;#8217;t even fancy. I was invited to a premiere for a car once (I know, I don&amp;amp;#8217;t really get it either), and this is what I wore, above. I think this is an all-time low in my fashion history. The neon yellow scarf is a disaster, obviously, and the gold bag is confusing (I think it&amp;amp;#8217;s technically a free makeup bag I got for buying $50 worth of products), but the arm warmers are the real travesty. Since I&amp;amp;#8217;m wearing short sleeves, the arm warmers are clearly there only for fashion, not function. And what is this look I&amp;amp;#8217;m trying to pull off? Vampire hipster clown? I plan on showing this picture to my future children to remind them that even though Mom is perfect now, she came from humble origins. I also learned an important style lesson from this: Simple is best. Almost always. Mindy&amp;amp;#8217;s most awesome red carpet moment, right this way &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;#8220;This wins &amp;amp;#8216;best clothing ensemble&amp;amp;#8217; in the awards show of my heart.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8212;Kaling at the 2011 Screen Actors Guild Awards My red-carpet triumph To leave you on a positive note, and so you think of me as a generally attractive and put-together human, I&amp;amp;#8217;m ending this with the red-carpet look I&amp;amp;#8217;m most proud of. It&amp;amp;#8217;s from the 2011 Screen Actors Guild Awards. Like every other American, I spend a good part of my time looking at Kardashians. Love or hate them, I think they dress phenomenally, which is sometimes tricky given their curves. So I tracked down their stylist, Monica Rose, to see if she&amp;amp;#8217;d style me. Monica is incredibly busy with the Kardashians, but she agreed to because she thought I was a hilarious and hot new voice in Hollywood (at least that&amp;amp;#8217;s what I assume; she never said this to me). Monica arrived with racks of gowns. The interesting thing was that Monica, while completely versed in couture, is not a label snob. There were labels I&amp;amp;#8217;d never heard of, and also labels available at the suburban Macy&amp;amp;#8217;s where I grew up. I was immediately angry about this. I want to wear Elie Saab like Halle Berry, or Marchesa like Nicole Richie! I don&amp;amp;#8217;t want to look like the mall rat I secretly am! I was wrong. Through Monica I learned that labels are fine but fit is paramount. She loved the color and the fabric, and reworked this Tadashi Shoji dress with a tailor so it fit me perfectly. We had three tailoring sessions because it was that important to her. I&amp;amp;#8217;m nervous about wearing light colors on my bottom half (a common concern for women with my body shape), but Monica freed me of that fear. The final touch: She cinched my waist in with a custom-made metal belt. The Office didn&amp;amp;#8217;t win &amp;amp;#8220;best ensemble&amp;amp;#8221; that night; Modern Family did. But I, Mindy Kaling, won &amp;amp;#8220;best clothing ensemble&amp;amp;#8221; in the awards show of my heart. Yep, truly. Nailed it."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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