"Off," Ilaria instructs, picking a Calvin Klein suit jacket from the racks. Miles slides into it, and this one is a hit. It fits the way a jacket should, which is tighter than you'd expect. (Hint: You should not be able to throw a football in your jacket.) Ilaria buttons Miles into a matching vest and then steps back to take a look; it works so well there's a near-audible click. Ilaria smiles, and Miles glances into the mirror to make the pained appraisal face that men make when they try on a sick suit. A tie bar is located and clipped into place. He looks like a rich man's problematic son.

Ilaria beams with approval. "Do you like it?" she asks, hands clasped in hope. (She loves it.)

"Huh? Yeah. It's cool." (He loves it.)

Before Miles ducks out, the suit must be tailored. Ilaria orbits him, pinning and tucking and swatting his hand when he fidgets. The scene has a Madonna-with-child kind of ritual sweetness about it—the custodial female preparing a helpless young man for the world. When the actor first arrived, he was dressed like a fog bank, in head-to-toe gray. Now he looks worthy of a commemorative coin. Ilaria finishes and steps away once more, arms folded across her chest. The thesis of her stance is clear: This, she's saying,_ is why a man needs a stylist._

···

Everything I know about the styling industry I've learned from watching The Rachel Zoe Project, which is exactly like_ Moby-Dick_ but with a tiny bronzed woman instead of Ahab, and Anne Hathaway's Oscar dress where the whale ought to be. Zoe shudders and sermonizes over detachable taffeta trains, and her monomania is equally consumptive of everything that crosses her path (like, other people). It is a show in which viewers feel the dire consequences of each decision even as they know that no decision carries any consequence at all. That atmosphere of mid frivolity and dread is one that seems to characterize a very broad strain of modern experience (the possibility of getting fired for a tweet, being self-conscious about your socks at a TSA screening, the News Corp. hacking of Jude Law's cell phone). When I fly to L.A. at the start of awards season to learn about the styling industry, I am not expecting to find God in a Patrik Ervell "winter jean." But it would be neat to see someone else find God in this way.

Awards season is the year's densest concentration of styling activity. It takes place over a six-week stretch between the Golden Globes and the Oscars. This period also includes the SAG Awards, the BAFTA Awards, the Independent Spirit Awards, plus additional lesser-known award shows and a whole raft of ancillary luncheons, presentations, and parties. Stylists dress their clients year-round, but awards season is when their work receives the glare of global scrutiny. One false move (an appearance on a worst-dressed list, say) is enough to wipe out a stylist's market value. The opposite is also true.

This season I will be tagging along with Ilaria, whose roster includes Bradley Cooper, Chris Evans, and Armie Hammer, among others. Armie, a SAG nominee for his role in J. Edgar, has agreed to be the lab mouse for this piece, and all week long I will follow Ilaria as she attends to the scouting, fitting, and tailoring of Armie's outfit.

We meet for dinner at the Chateau Marmont on the night I arrive. The venue is Ilaria's choice, and because it favors the modern speakeasy aesthetic of subtle elevators and misleading staircases, I am instantly lost on my way to the dining patio. Adrift in the lobby among lozenge-shaped tables and the kind of burnt lighting calibrated to flatter a tan, I ask for water and wait. Lindsay Lohan sits nearby with phosphorescent hair, smoking. (Strictly in the literal sense. Sadly.)