Posts Tagged ‘fug’
Seriously . . .
I have to admit that I don’t really pay attention to what Marc Jacobs is doing. Ever since the Evil AntiZob first directed his evil gaze toward me, I’ve been afraid of him. I know people who feel the same way about other things. Some get anxious when a bird flies too close to their head. Others may shriek in horror when a spider appears out of nowhere. I have my own phobias. For instance, I tense up when I hear the name of the so-called designer, causing a little line between my eyebrows to deepen. I know that if it keeps happening, I’m going to develop a permanent crease there. Oh, the horror!
Anyhow, I was checking out the competition on WordPress, and I came across the most hideous thing I’ve seen in ages. It seems that the Evil AntiZob has designed this monstrously ugly shoe. I guess he figured it would be clever to create a shoe with the heel in the wrong place. However, to me it looks like something that the freaky girl who crawled out of the well in The Ring would wear as she was contorting her way out of the TV set and slithering across the floor towards you. In other words, this shoe would be the last thing you would see before you died a horrible death.
I can’t think of a more frightening way to go.
Overworked Boobs
I remember a time when brassiere ads were a lot of fun. Before women started burning their bras, advertisers attempted to market bras in an empowering manner, as if they were saying “You’ve got boobs. Why not take care of them?”
After the bra-burning era, Jane Russell became the face of bra marketing. Although she was a relic of the previous era, she was also a potent presence: Aware of her power over men, yet strong and independent. She wanted a bra that could support her breasts. She wasn’t wearing it for your sake.
Now bra marketing is all about how little a woman can actually wear while still wearing a bra. Victoria’s Secret commercials are the gold-standard of the genre, featuring supermodels writhing around in a state of orgasmic bliss. Nevertheless, if fashion didn’t demand such unobtrusive undergarments there would be no need for those undergarments. I blame the skanky clothes women are buying.
For example, I walked by the Bebe store yesterday in the mall. It seemed like every article in the window had a ridiculously-overworked bodice. A Gaultier cone bra would have been more subtle. A tube top on a trampoline would have been more inconspicuous. A T-shirt with two iron-on fried eggs decals would have been more demure.
Are women so desperate for attention that they need to wear clothing that screams “Check out my rack!”? Enough with the ruching and the pin tucks and the sequins and the appliques and the empire waists and the smocking. Enough with the breast implants, too.
I’m all for sex appeal, but women need to realize that they’re more than just the sum of their parts — it’s 2008, for Zob’s sake! When you measure your success in life by how many times a stranger stares at your boobs in a day, you have no life.
The word “effortless”
“Effortless” is one of those words that gets on my nerves like fingernails on a blackboard. Fashion isn’t effortless. Style doesn’t come that easily. Looking good takes a lot of work.
First of all, you need to put some effort into those things that many people take for granted, like washing your face or brushing your teeth. Occasionally, the pendulum swings the other way, and being smelly and gross becomes de rigueur, but that’s usually a short-lived trend. Smelly, gross people might look good in a Nylon editorial spread. In-person, however, it’s a different story.
Next, you have to put some effort into maintaining your body. Fashion always favors the fit. Take Karl Lagerfeld, for example. Now that he’s dropped a few pounds, he’s even more iconic than ever. Yes, heavier people can be fit and gorgeous, too — don’t start posting nasty comments on my site because I mentioned that weight-loss can be healthy. Still, vitality is one of those things that never goes out of style. Whatever your body looks like, clean-living and a healthy lifestyle do begin to supersede style as you age. Living that lifestyle takes plenty of effort.
Finally, there’s fashion itself. People who live and breathe fashion have put a lot of effort into honing their craft. If they get out of bed looking gorgeous it’s because they’ve put in the time to look gorgeous. That good haircut didn’t just happen. Those eyes look fresh because they’ve seen some sleep. That walk to the closet to get dressed was graceful because someone was listening when they were told to stand up straight. And that outfit is drop-dead gorgeous because the woman wearing it has been reading fashion magazines for twenty years, and she knows how to put things together innately. It might be second nature now, but it sure took a lot of effort to make it look effortless.
So, when you hear an over-processed piece of work like Rachel Zoe mention “effortless style”, do me a favor and tell her to shut her fat hole.
Neon Shoelaces
I got excited a few seasons ago when I started to see 80s workout wear influencing both London catwalks and the club scene. Fashion was desperate for a healthy dose of camp, and what’s campier than the age of neon and spandex?
Kids started dressing like crazy kids again. Stylish teenage girls were no longer wearing the same tracksuits as their mothers. Rainbow-bright color combinations were distinguishing the chic from the common. Suddenly, it took more than just a Hello Kitty shirt or a stupid Emo haircut to be the coolest kid on the block.
The trend is finally spilling over into mainstream fashion on this side of the pond. Unfortunately, it seems to have been distilled and rebottled in a more-palatable form; North Americans are still preoccupied with “good taste”. It takes a very daring kid to wear head-to-toe neon when the rest of her friends are still dressed in jeans and hoodies.
Nevertheless, kids around here are starting to going crazy for neon shoelaces again. I’m seeing them everywhere. Of all the trends that could have caught on, I wish that something else would have stuck. Shoelaces? C’mon!
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Doing things halfway and half-assed is the American way. What’s next? Wearing a fifty-cent rubber bracelet to visibly express your self-identity? Oh yeah . . .
A Gift from Zob
Just a moment ago, I was wondering what on earth I was going to blog about today. I’m in one of those moods where nothing seems to inspire my usual cleverness. Then I stumbled across this gem!
That’s Jade from America’s Next Top Model. When I first saw the picture I said “Wow! That tranny spent a bundle on her rack!” Then I read the caption. What a freebie!
It just goes to show you: Zob works in mysterious ways.
Trend Warning: Camel Toes
I was going to call this section “Trend Watch.” Then I realized that I’m afraid of most returning trends.
Take the camel toe, for example. I was strolling through a mall yesterday when I noticed a store boarded up for renovations. The entire facade had been plastered with gigantic images from the store’s catalogue, blown-up to decorate the storefront until it reopened. That’s when I saw it: The world’s biggest camel toe.
I couldn’t believe that anyone would have chosen that image for a print campaign, nevermind for a billboard-sized advertisement. I don’t what the retailer was trying to sell, but it was more intimate than a limousine ride with Britney Spears — and almost as disturbing!
Trends come and go, and I honestly love the fact that what’s out today will be in tomorrow. Still, I tend to shy away from clothing that reveals the private parts in all their anatomical splendor. Call me old-fashioned, but I rue the day when vaginas are the new black.
White Leather Handbags
White leather handbags rank highly on my “do not wear” list for one reason: They almost always looks cheap and worn out ten minutes after you’ve bought them. I probably see as many girls carrying dirty white leather bags in the city as I see poochy girls in low-rise jeans, so you know the problem is epidemic.
A handbag is a utilitarian item. It must provide a function that justifies its existence; unlike jewelry, it isn’t purely decorative. Yet it should be able to provide that function fashionably.
There is nothing fashionable about wearing something that is filthy. Mankind crawled out of the primordial muck for a reason: We didn’t like being dirty. So why do supposedly-evolved, modern women purchase white leather handbags only to leave them sitting on the floor of a bus? Why do they continue to carry around scuffed and mangled bags that look as if they’ve been treated more savagely than the dead animal who gave up its hide to craft them? Why do they buy white leather in the first place when it shows every dirty finger print, broadcasting to the world how infrequently they wash their hands? Yechh!
Simply put, white leather bags are trashy, and so are the dirty broads who carry them.
Leathery, white bag
Contrived Nonchalance
I don’t believe there’s a single style that I loathe more than contrived nonchalance. I can’t understand why anyone would try so hard to appear as if they haven’t tried at all.
Most people who embrace this style do it because they think that they’re making a statement against fashion. However, most of them spend more time contriving their looks than I do (and my gorgeousness has been known to make the blind see).
Take Evel Dick, for instance. Last year he won half a million bucks on Big Brother by pretending to be an agent of the counterculture, and he did it in Mom jeans! Sure, they were ripped-up Mom jeans, but that doesn’t make a difference. This guy honestly believed that he was an icon of antifashion: The essence of rebellion.
The problem with Dick was that he simply jumped off of one bandwagon and onto another. Even worse, it was a bandwagon where all the guys hiked their jeans around their ribs so that the whole world would get a good look at their moose knuckles.
If you don’t care about your appearance, it’s no big deal. I probably won’t be going to places where I have to look at you, anyway. But if you’re going to pretend that you don’t care about fashion, don’t don the same uniform that all of your ugly friends are wearing. You aren’t fooling anyone but yourself with your juvenile stunt.
Scrubs…
I loathe scrubs: The hideous utilitarian garments the style-challenged wear to my gym. Nothing says unfashionable to me like a guy who has stolen his pants from a public hospital. I can just imagine some doctor saying “I’m sorry, but little Timmy can’t have an operation to save his gangrenous leg because too much of the hospital’s budget has gone toward replacing the hundreds of pairs of scrubs that were stolen last year.”
Anyway, if you’re going to steal your clothes, why wouldn’t you steal something nice? I don’t get it.
Auntie Fashion 