wtffashionshark

Hallo Readers,

Those of you who are regular visitors to this blog or who follow WTF on  Twitter (what do you mean you don’t do Twitter? @WTF_EEK) will have guessed that WTF was not prostrate with grief at the demise of Lady Thatcher. Although she was obviously a brilliant woman with astonishing presence and formidable debating skills, WTF is old enough to have lived through Thatcherism and  the destruction of the miners, the decimation of the unions, the demonisation of gays, the depiction of Nelson Mandela as a “terrorist” and the cultivation of the elbows-out, greed-is-good, me-me-me, fuck-you culture of the 1980′s and she hated it. Nor does she buy into the mythology that Lady T’s remarkable achievement of becoming the first female Prime Minister blazed a trail for women.  That said, WTF is not one for dancing on people’s graves and so she was all bristling disapproval at the exultant juvenilia that burst out within minutes of  the announcement. Of course, those who loathed everything Lady T stood for were entitled to toast her passing, not least those from former mining communities or whose relatives had been smeared as having pissed on the Hillsborough dead. But dancing round Brixton or Glasgow swigging champagne is another thing entirely and when the likes of Johnny Rotten, Billy Bragg and Martin McGuinness all think something is going too far, then the chances are that it probably is.

On the other hand, Call me Dave has quite lost his marbles in trying to create a degree of mass mourning that would embarrass North Korea. Did Dave not appreciate that spending £10m on a quasi-State funeral, featuring such luminaries as Joan Collins, Jeremy Clarkson and Dame Shirley Bassey, would not be universally popular? Did he not think that calling MPs back from their sunbeds for the obsequies and recompensing them thousands in public funds for doing so would not be well received? (Anyway, why aren’t they already back at work? Every other bugger is). Did he not think that ordering civil servants and diplomats to wear funereal black next Wednesday was a bit OTT? Was there any sight as nauseating as the ghastly old fossils who had knifed her 23 years ago now standing up in Parliament and praising her to the skies? Or any sight as glorious  as pompous Tory windbag Sir Tony Baldry MP (knighted, no doubt, for services to arselicking) being squashed flat by the Speaker when he rose to protest that Glenda Jackson was being rude about the sainted Lady T? What did he think she was going to do? Recite Christina Rosetti’s Remember Me When I am Gone Away?

So on Wednesday 17 April, WTF will be staying indoors. She won’t be dancing in the street and frightening the horses. She won’t be throwing flowers at the gun-carriage and wailing like a banshee.  She will however be enjoying the splenetic fury of the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph which have failed to grasp that somehow the Nation is bearing up. The Mail excelled itself this week with a story about Romany Blyth, a teacher for special needs students (anathema) who compared Lady T to Hitler (double anathema) and called for street parties (triple anathema) and for people to piss on Lady T’s grave (Call the Firing Squad). Romany, squealed the Mail, had breast implants on the NHS because of poor self esteem!!!!! WTF is unable to see what this had to do with the price of fish but there we are. Paul Dacre has clearly gone more bonkers than Dave and doubtless a cardiac surgeon and an expert in hypertension are on permanent stand-by in the gilded lobby at Mail HQ in the event that he has a seizure.

Let us distract ourselves with some badly dressed people, starting with Z list singer and celebritee, Aubrey O’Day.

Aubrey was a member of a girl group  Danity Kane (no, me neither) but she was chucked out  in 2008 and now earns a living in the traditional celebritee way, namely baring all for Playboy, appearing in shite TV reality shows and singing the odd tune. Here is she flashing the flesh in Las Vegas dressed as a St. Trinian’s slapper. The silver belt resembles a medieval implement of torture although it cannot be nearly as painful as the cheesewire crotch-skimming leotard. If there isn’t a law against wearing this in public, then there should be.

Now we turn to Little Mix’s Leigh-Anne Pinnock wearing the most appalling trousers WTF ever did see in her life. Well, I say trousers…….

First we have Aubrey in her suspender-leotard and now we have Leigh-Anne in her crushed velvet suspender-trousers. What is the point of suspender-trousers? They do not keep your legs warm and they look stupid but at least Leigh-Anne has the thighs for them. WTF fears that in keeping with the governing rule of British street fashion, namely the fatter the leg the shorter the skirt, wobbling fatties will soon come tottering down the High Street  of a Saturday night with flesh spilling out of their suspender-trousers like little hippos peering from a watering hole. As for the tee-shirt babbling on about parental guidance…. where were Leigh-Anne’s parents to talk her out of this ghastliness?

Now we meet dancer and actress Julianne Hough wearing Peter Pilotto Fall 2013

This is not so much Fall 2o13 as Fail 2013 with its cornucopia of patterns, shapes and fabrics.  There is the white thing across the shoulder-blades like the hood on an academic gown – think watching an episode of Lewis on psychedelic drugs. There are the very swirly tits – think Katie Price’s bikini top. There is the slimy green/blue mermaid fabric and the horrible little frilled skirt and the pattern around the minge department. In fact, the whole thing is deeply disturbing.  Just say no.

Here is The Cars’ Ric Ocasek, pictured with wife of 24 years, actress and model Paulina Porizkova, at a bash in NYC.

WTF likes the way that Ric and Paulina have colour-coordinated their ensembles and thinks that Paulina looks lovely and much younger than 48, which she is. WTF also likes the way that Ric, 64, looks like Bill Wyman’s bookworm Auntie. She is, however, less keen on the colour-swirly jacket with the Aboriginal fish print which is giving her a headache. We can but be grateful that Julianne Hough was not there because had she, Rick and Paulina all stood together, opthalmic departments all over Manhattan would have been crammed with citizens suffering from retinal damage.

Off we go to the Academy of Country Music Awards where we shall examine a couple of complete disasters. First off, we have singer Rae Lynn.

Rae Lynn is 19 years old so why she is dressed as a paedophile’s wet dream, WTF cannot say. The frock is deeply offensive, a frou-frou of peachy froth and silver thread, but to team it with matching Hallo-y’all-I-live-at-Southfork booties is beyond all comprehension.

But bad as that was, this is worse. Meet Tobi Lee from Mustang Sally.

This is just so wrong on every level. WTF has seen some stinkeroonies in her time but this doesn’t just take the biscuit, this is the whole McVitie’s factory working on overtime. Tobi is wearing a leopard-skin bodice and  a tutu the colour of shit worn with a red bejewelled over-bodice and red platform booties. Why? Why design it? Why buy it? Why wear it? As for the hair, someone should have warned the poor girl not to touch an electric socket with wet hands…. Note to Tobi -  you are either colour blind or you are taking the piss, but either way, stop it please.

OK Readers, that’s your lot for this week. There was a bumper crop of comments last week, which made WTF’s heart sing. Keep them coming this week and let us meet again next week. Have fun and be good x

Hallo Readers,

In 1942, William Beveridge produced a report entitled Social Insurance and Allied Services (known as the Beveridge Report). His report proposed that all people of working age should pay a weekly national insurance contribution and in return, benefits would be paid to people who were sick, unemployed, retired or widowed. Beveridge argued that this system would provide a minimum standard of living “below which no one should be allowed to fall” and identified  the five ‘Giant Evils’ of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness which the Government should find ways to combat.  After the war and the election of a Labour Government, the Welfare State was born and in 1946 Beveridge became the first Baron Beveridge. Move forward to 2013 and the conviction for manslaughter of six children in Derby by Mick and Mairead Philpott and their friend Paul Mosley. They set fire to  the Philpotts’ house to frame Mick’s former mistress Lisa who had had the temerity to remove herself and her children from the unsavoury ménage à quatorze  that was her, Mick, their five kids, Mairead, her son and Mairead and Mick’s five kids. Mick was not a man to take either rejection or the loss of benefits consequent upon the removal of his and Lisa’s kids. The plan all went horribly wrong and the children died rather than being heroically rescued. So far, so awful and the scum have now been locked up. Enter the Daily Mail which decided to use the occasion to blame the deaths of the six children on the Welfare State with the headline “Vile Product of Welfare UK”. The logic, if that is the right word, which it isn’t, was that had Mick not been a scrounger living off benefits, the children would not have died. Welfare benefits were certainly a factor here but Mick was also a violent, controlling, publicity-seeking sociopath with a previous conviction for the attempted murder of a girlfriend who had ended their relationship.  On the Daily Mail’s logic, the fact that Stephen Seddon murdered his parents for their money makes him a product of a system of inherited wealth and anyone due to inherit money from their parents is a potential murderer. But then the Daily Mail  never knowingly lets the facts get in the way of a good headline, particularly in the same week that Chancellor George “We’re All In it Together” Osborne and Secretary for Work and Pensions Iain “I can live on £53 a week, no problem” Duncan Smith cut benefits and legal aid. There was an outcry against the Daily Mail’s headline and the Chancellor then weighed in as well, and today the paper, full of injured innocence, splashed the headline that it had only been making ”the perfectly reasonable point” that Mick was a product of the benefits system and invited a readers’ debate, adding “But beware, the Left WILL hijack the result”.  So there we have it. Beveridge has blood on his hands. Soon the Daily Mail will be calling for him to be stripped  posthumously of his peerage. Meanwhile, those who chose to celebrate Mick as a bit of a one on the Jeremy Kyle Show, TV documentaries and countless newspaper profiles “he lives with two birds and goes dogging and  has loads of kids, get in!!!!” might wish to consider to whom they give what Mrs Thatcher used to call the oxygen of publicity. Oh, and don’t bother wasting the price of a postage stamp writing to the Press Complaints Commission because the Chairman is Paul Dacre, Editor in Chief of the Daily Mail. Small world, isn’t it?

Let us cheer ourselves up a bit with a look at the sheer silliness of over-exposed, badly-dressed people who parade themselves for the public delectation and pay stylists a fortune to look like a sack of shit. Heaven knows we need some cheer in our snow-bound, miserable  April lives. Let us start with actress and O.C. star Mischa Barton wearing Katherine Kidd.

WTF did not realise that a young Mischa was in The Sixth Sense, but then she (WTF, that is) had her eyes shut for much of it. Mischa’s abs are absolutely fabulous and the shoes are pretty but the outfit is a dud, a quasi-bridal combo rendered from an old net curtain with her bra on show. $1,000 down the toilet with loud gurgling noises. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh…..

Here is the gorgeous Robert Downey Jnr. looking rather less than gorgeous in  Ferragamo.  

Robert was in Seoul for the launch of his new movie Iron Man 3. Have we not suffered enough? Not to put too fine a point on it, Robert looks like an  ageing bellhop in overlong trousers and spiked trainers and he has also done something very facetious to his hair. He looks silly. And he knows it.

Meet Adrienne Maloof, described as “businesswoman, reality star, philanthropist and shoe designer” at beta-blogger Perez Hilton’s birthday party.

I know, I know….it’s bad. She looks like a Madame of a brothel in one of those Westerns where Clint Eastwood rides into town with a scowl and a hard-on. Adrienne, who is very foxy for 51, is going out with Sean Stewart, 32, son of Rod Stewart, 68. Luckily for Sean, she is way too old for Rod whose third wife, Penny, is nine years younger than her putative daughter-in-law.

Do not adjust your set. This is Kim Kardashian wearing Lanvin.

Look, here’s the thing. Just because it is Lanvin does not mean that it is nice. Ask Sigourney Weaver in her infamous black pillow dress which was, in essence, $2000 worth of dreck turned back to front with disastrous effect. Even if Kim were not pregnant with an enormous chest and an extremely large bottom, this would still look like a crocheted lampshade.

In fact, on reflection Kim would be better off wearing the lampshade, and she would also have saved herself some money, given that the dress is retailing for $3,000. And now a few words about Kim’s pregnancy. First, women get bigger when they are pregnant. This is because there is a baby in there and amniotic fluid, or in Kim’s case, idiotic fluid and the hormones are going mental. So both Kim and the press had better come to terms with this growing girth thing because there are four months left before baby Kimye has his or her first photo-call. Second, just because you are pregnant does not mean that you have to squeeze yourself into tight leather displaying every anatomical detail but equally it does not mean that you have to dress as a crocheted lampshade. Third, and this is only a guess I grant you,  if Kanye is still choosing Kim’s outfits, she must have done something really bad to piss him off.

We now meet singer and actress Kelly Chen wearing Stella McCartney at the opening of the new Sergio Rossi boutique in Hong Kong.

WTF is no great fan of Stella at the best of times, and these are not the best of times. Kelly is wearing see-through lace trousers, although onlookers have been spared an imminent minge moment by the ugly black lining. What WTF wants to know is what is the point of wearing see-through trousers? See- through trousers are about as much use as a chocolate teapot and not as tasty, not to mention very draughty around the nether regions. This ghastly see-through trousers trend is going to be as ghastly as the ghastly see-through skirt trend, and one can but hope that it stops very soon because it is ghastly. The Sergio Rossi shoes and bag, on the other hand, are cute.

We now come to serial offender Ciara wearing Givenchy Menswear. And yes you did read that correctly…

This is just terribly, terribly terrible. There is the Madonna tee-shirt (the real one, not the tawdry singer), the uneven-hemmed tunic thingy, the white leggings and the hi-top trainers, and the total cost must be around $2,000. The effect is to make Ciara look like a member of the Klu Klux Klan moonlighting as a dental nurse. And the back view is no better… .

WTF observes that the hems are a little clumsy given the obscene price tag for this tat. One of Ciara’s  greatest hits was called Speechless which more than sums up the reaction of bemused onlookers

OK Readers, that’s your lot for this week. Keep posting those comments as there was a top batch of them this week, and let us meet again next Friday. Be good x