Ruth La Ferla
New York Times News Service

Every red carpet has its head-turners, dresses that captivate, spark style trends, and celebrate turning points in a star’s career. Much the same was on display during the Golden Globes on Jan. 15. In past seasons, the looks on parade at the annual glam fest helped cement reputations and jump-start careers.

When Reese Witherspoon stepped out in 2007, after her breakup with Ryan Phillippe, her tight yellow Nina Ricci dress lent her an unaccustomed oomph. She was sexier than ever, so it seemed.

Two years ago, Maggie Gyllenhaal injected spirit into her modest indie profile with a peach-tone mermaid silhouette by Roland Mouret. The following year, at the Oscars, Katherine Heigl worked her curves, her formfitting scarlet gown transforming her from a daffy approachable girl-next-door into a pneumatically contoured cinema diva.

“That dress was a game-changer,” said Nicole Chavez, who coaxed Heigl into her one-shoulder sizzler. Such moments can be trans formative, said Chavez, a stylist who has worked with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Scarlett Johansson. “People – casting agents, studio executives – stop and take notice,” she said. “They are suddenly interested in working with you.”

Such image-shaping clout, long concentrated in the hands of agents and publicists, has been ceded in part to a coterie of influential stylists, Hollywood taste makers like Annabel Tollman, Petra Flannery, Estee Stanley and Deborah Waknin, and household names like Rachel Zoe, whose fame matches, even eclipses, that of the women they dress.

Most subscribe to the axiom that red-carpet exposure can serve as a billboard for designers, who reap hundreds of thousands of dollars in free advertising, and turn unfamiliar names like Elie Saab and Naeem Khan into covetable luxury brands. Less often acknowledged is that such exposure showcases the stylists’ talents as well, elevating once lowly shleppers, the haulers of garments and pinners of hems, into formidable power brokers capable of swaying the trajectory of a star’s career.

Who wields that kind of power now? A list compiled last spring by The Hollywood Reporter identified stars like Elizabeth Stewart, Leith Clark, Anna Bingemann and Jessica Paster. In a red-carpet season, you are who you dress. When the 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld snared the spotlight, appearing at the Golden Globes last year in a shimmering white column by Prabal Gurung, her stylists, Karla Welch and Kemal Harris, shared the glow. That promise of recognition helps explain why high-octane stylists would choose to work punishing hours, flexing fashion muscle, but just as often subjugating their own tastes and instincts to those of their charges.

Dressing for a major red carpet isn’t simply getting ready for a big party and looking pretty,’’ said George Kotsiopoulos, a stylist and a former editor at T: The New York Times Style Magazine who is now a host on “Fashion Police” on the E! network “it’s been about selling yourself as a brand.”

Film executives tend to concur. “The studios take style heavily into account,” said Terry Press, an entertainment marketing consultant. Stylist fees are built into their budgets. As insiders see it, that investment is worthwhile: The right red-carpet turnout can help a performer change lanes. “If your client plays nefarious characters,” said the stylist Jeanne Yang, you might dress them, say, in tulle, to demonstrate “that she’s really a fresh ingenue.”

Others strive for sartorial consistency. Mila Kunis’ transformation, at the hands of Flannery, from ill-kempt hipster to regal sexpot doubtless helped secure her latest role, as the new “face” of Dior. A fashion or fragrance contract can earn an actress in the tens of millions.

The profession, for most, requires a surgeon’s incisiveness and an analyst’s sensitive radar. “I know when to stop pushing,” said Tara Swennen, whose clients include Kristen Stewart and Kate Beckinsale. “If I give them a dress and they look at me sideways, I understand, OK, they don’t want to wear it, and that’s fine.”

Leslie Fremar, who has been credited with raising the glamour quotient of clients like Charlize Theron and Julianne Moore recalls last year when she prepared Gyllenhaal for her star turn at the Oscars. Dries Van Noten had sent two dresses, one darkly fetching, the other exuberantly patterned. “Everyone – the makeup artist, her mother, her friends – cast a vote,” Fremar recalled. “They were looking at me to make the decision.” She was reluctant. “Some of my clients are my best friends,” she said, “but at the end of the day I have to remember, they are my bosses, too.”

Gyllenhaal decided on the floral. “It makes me happy,” Fremar recalled her saying. “Let’s go with it.”