Stylists are quite inventive. They get away with changing the rules of fashion. Having worked for fashion magazines in the past, I myself have done the unthinkable. We can turn tube tops into skirts. We have asked models to wear ruffled skirts as tops. An oversized t-shirt can be transformed into a belted dress. The possibilities are endless!

Why is it that when a celebrity or normal person does the same thing, people give her flack for doing so? At a red carpet premiere on Monday, Amanda Seyfried decided to experiment with a dress from the Bodamyr Fall 2010 collection by wearing it backwards with the zipper facing forward.

A lot of fashion websites have given this move their thumbs down. Red Carpet Fashion Awards commented, “We ask for celebs to be more inventive on the red carpet, but this isn’t what I had in mind.”

Amanda wasn’t the first celebrity to wear a red carpet dress “the wrong way.” Remember Angelina Jolie’s Max Azria dress that she wore to the 2009 SAG Awards? She wore it backwards to keep the plunging neckline at the back, while the more conservative part covers her bosom. Critics commented that she should’ve shown off her cleavage instead.

If celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe pulled this off, I believe fashionista wannabes would be scrambling to do the same thing. What if it were the editors at Vogue who asked Amanda to wear the dress the wrong way and piled up some rockstar bling to label the look “rebellious?”

Sometimes it’s just a matter of how we look at things [and people].