The countdown to the 85th annual Academy Awards has begun, with the glittering Oscars ceremony taking place on Sunday 24 February.

As usual, the coveted golden statuettes aside, all eyes will be on Hollywood's most glamorous women and their fashion statements for the evening. The Academy Awards red carpet, as it was last year (with Angelina Jolie's black-gown-right-leg pose), will be the centre of attention for fashionistas everywhere.

A-list Hollywood fashion isn't just about exquisite couture and flawless fashion... it's also about the tad more eccentric and, in some cases, downright absurd, ensembles.

For example, costume designer Lizzy Gardiner turned heads in 1994, when she wore a gown made of American Express credit cards. Outlandish? Yes. But it did work... Gardiner was nominated for her work in The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert. And she won.

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The ultimate fashion disaster in Oscar history must go to singer and actress Bjork - for her Swan Dress. She even pretended to lay an egg on the red carpet.

"What surprises me is that they thought I was trying to fit in but got it wrong, that I expected everyone to be wearing peacock dresses and gorilla outfits! What they don't mention is that I had brought six ostrich eggs with me and I was dropping them carefully on the red carpet. But other people's bodyguards kept picking them up and saying in their thick American accents, ''Scuse me, ma'am, you dropped this,'" she confessed in an interview with GQ magazine in 2011.

Take a look at the worst dressed Oscar attendees through the years...

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