Penelope Cruz in Balmain from Lily et Cie

When watching the Oscars the other night, all our twitter friends were aghast when Penelope Cruz said, not only that she was wearing a 60-year old Pierre Balmain dress, but she had first spied it in a store 8 years ago! LizaJane411 tweeted: 8 years and that dress was still there, where in a museum? and how did she still fit into it I mean she deserves an award for that! JSG, too, was solidly in the camp of doubters on that story, until now.

Thanks to the investigative work of Sxy Fashion Queen, we understand the history of both the stunning Balmain dress and Lily et Cie, a store we are putting on our itinerary of our next west coast jaunt. Yet even though we now get the history of Penelope Cruz's frock, it doesn't change our opinion of it (which several of our Twitter friends shared): It looked like a wedding dress, but we give Penelope major props for the eco-friendly dress.