Casual never looked so alluring.

Because I consider Oscar night as serious and as endurance-necessary an event as a Princeton dual-race, I stayed in last night, ate a well-balanced sugar-free dinner, opted for Fresca over Stella and went to bed at a reasonable 11:30pm.

I had planned to On Demand "An Inconvenient Truth" - pretty much the last nominated film I'd yet to take in - but in the end, I just couldn't fork over $3.99 to spend my Saturday night learning about diminishing ice-caps and indirectly supporting Cameron Diaz going makeup-free at yet another hybrid-required green carpet event.

No, instead, I flipped to channel 49 and caught one of the 365 films chosen by the TCM network as part of their "31 Days of Oscar."

Rarely can I ever catch a film in its entirety on cable, but last night the stars aligned - and why wouldn't they on Oscar-eve? - and I was able to watch for the first time all 150 sweeping minutes of the Meryl Streep, Robert Redford classic, Out of Africa.

Not since The English Patient has khaki casual looked so divinely inviting.

Whether toiling in the coffee fields, on safari in the bush or sipping whiskey with Denys in wicker porch chairs listening to Mozart on the gramophone, Baroness Blixen was head-to-toe the lady in varying degrees of fitted khaki, rolled-sleeved oxford shirts, distressed caramel-colored riding boots and when the occasion called for it, simple structured hats and waist-cinched tea-length sheaths. In short, the perfect country-house attire.

It takes a quite a film - and quite a costuming director's eye - to make this can't-live-without-bronzer girl want to trade the Fendi high-waisted crepe trousers she doesn't even have yet for dust-stained dungarees and her sideswept bangs for sweat-stuck tendrils.

Then again, it might be because I assumed those matted tendrils came with a complimentary wash-and-rinse and Coleridge recitation from Mr. Redford.