Let me say first that I love the color here.

Then as we drift down the dress, I am pretty sure I still like it, even though it’s not inspiring me as much as I want it to — the lace feels like somebody’s last-minute afterthought addition to try and dress up a plain shift. But it’s fine. I still like it, and it was better than a lot of what else got hauled down the carpet.

And then, we get to the bottom. It’s the SHOES that are sticking in my craw. I don’t know what it is — the fact that almost all of her toes are out, the long strap down the center… hard to tell, but somehow it’s all reflecting back upward and giving a clunky aura to to the outfit. They make her feet look enormous. This seems unfair. I’ve never looked at Nina Dobrev, long and slender as everything else about her is, and thought, “Wow, she’s on skis down there.” In fact, her feet didn’t look big the day before:

See? Perfectly proportional (lest I give her a complex about her feet; Nina, they’re seriously fine, IT WAS THE SHOES SOMEHOW). I also like the rest of this outfit — it’s youthful, it’s flirty, it’s achingly pretty just as she is. I’m happy she won — a show like Vampire Diaries isn’t going to get much credit from the industry itself simply because it feels like they’re biased against believing anything on The CW could be legitimately good or well-acted or well-plotted. legitimately good. But it IS all of those things, and she excels on it in a part that in lesser hands could be annoyingly heroic, so it’s great that the people chose her as their favorite TV actress. Well done, people. And well done, Nina. Next time just call us to go shoe-shopping with you first.

[Photos: Getty]