Emmy Awards: Who’ll take the high-fashion risk?

Actors Kat Dennings (L) and Nick Zano arrive for the 64th Annual Prime Time Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, California on September 23, 2012. AFP PHOTO / ROBYN BECK

There’s always someone who takes the high-fashion risk on the Emmy red carpet. The question for the Sunday night ceremony at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles is: Who’ll be wearing it?

It was Gwyneth Paltrow and her belly-baring, metallic lace number last year. It wasn’t a critical favorite, but now — in retrospect — it seemed like the spark for many of the current runway trends.

As stars started arriving on Sunday, the red carpet was seeing plenty of red — including on Kat Dennings in J. Mendel and Padma Lakshmi in a red strapless gown and Ginnifer Goodwin in red flame over champagne, both by Monique Lhuillier. Jena Malone wore burgundy J. Mendel.

Celebrities build their fashion reputation largely from the red carpet, Lhuillier said, and they’ll affect trends for color, silhouette and embellishments.

Lhuillier said Emmy gowns were already in the works earlier this month when she presented her most recent catwalk collection — one in which she declared “the ballgown is gone.” Instead, she focused her full-length dresses in mermaid and other sleeker hemlines.

Louise Roe, a fashion commentator and Glamour magazine editor, who’ll host of the second season of NBC’s “Fashion Star,” said her eyes will be on the lookout for anything eye-catching, especially if anyone taps into the harnesses, sheer panels and cutout bodices that designers are offering for 2013.

She thinks stars from “Gossip Girl” and “Revenge” could be among those to watch.

Not everyone watching TV will need a gown in the coming weeks or months, but when they do, they’ll often turn to the brands they hear about at the Emmys, Oscars or Grammys, Lhuillier said.

“That’s what a red carpet does for a company like mine.”