The amusing new styles of Julia Stiles

Actress Julia Styles pokes fun at celebrity fashion with a video featuring her new line of "green" clothing. (Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images)

Ah, Julia Stiles. Movies always get a little better whenever she’s in them – in part because she projects an intelligence that seems sorely lacking in a lot of her starlet peers. After credibly tackling Shakespeare at least three times in the late-90s/early 2000’s, making duds like Down to You seem palatable and holding her own against the toothy Julia Roberts in Mona Lisa Smile, I figured there wasn’t anything this young actress couldn’t do.

But Julia Stiles, fashion designer? I wouldn’t have seen that one coming (though I do confess to going through an ill-advised phase when I was pretty into all of those two-tone tees and do-rags she had going on in the highly addictive Save the Last Dance). Yet, in a new promotional video, it sure looks like Stiles’s latest venture is a new eco-friendly clothing line on a spiffy new site called juliastilesstyles.com.

Or is she? It takes a while to catch on, given the actress’ deader-than-deadpan delivery, but once she gets around to describing a “super universal” suit made out of newspaper (according to this outtake, the look was inspired by homeless children), it’s clear she’s pulling a terrific joke at the expense of some Hollywood’s more vapid, eco-friendly celebs. She never names names, but the self-satisfied air she projects throughout the entire thing immediately made me think of these two….

--Lee Ferguson