wtffashionshark

Hallo readers,

Last week, WTF told you that the weather forecast for the Bank Holiday was bad, and it turned out to be worse. But there was entertainment galore all about, most notably with the shenannigans over the Essex Lion.  Mr and Mrs Martin from Canvey Island, Essex, and Mr and Mrs Atkin from Louth, Lincolnshire, were staying on the opposite sides of a caravan site in St Osyth, a village near Clacton-on-Sea. You may not know Clacton, but trust me, Copacabana Beach it ain’t.  At about 6. 30 on Sunday evening, both the Martins and the Atkins  thought they saw a lion in a nearby field.  You can be robbed at knifepoint and made to wait ages for a copper to turn up, but  call in a lion on the loose in Clacton and they are there like a million men. Countless police officers, experts operating heatseeking equipment at a cost of £800 an hour, two helicopters, zoo keepers various armed with stun guns  and dozens of reporters then spent the next 19 hours combing the countryside in search of the said lion despite the fact that (i) Essex is not the Serengeti (ii) Essex is not near the Serengeti (iii) no zoo, wildlife park or circus had reported a missing lion, and you’d think they would notice a lion cage with no lion in it  (iv) there was no physical evidence of the presence of a lion, such as fur, droppings or half eaten caravanners and (v) there was at least a reasonable suspicion that the Martins and the Atkins had got this one wrong, possibly as a result of their being a bit crap at lion-spotting. After all, there aren’t a lot of opportunities for lion-spotting in either Canvey Island or Louth. The hunt reminded WTF of the scene in The Fugitive where Tommy Lee Jones runs around Illinois in a frenzy demanding helicopters and hounds to catch Harrison Ford. Having blown the next five years’ overtime budget, the cops concluded that Essex was still a lion free zone and the villagers in St Osyth are now vying with each other for the honour of having their pet moggies credited as the Essex Lion. Ginny Murphy’s large and improbably named cat Teddy Bear, a Maine Coon , is well ahead of his rival, a ginger called Tom. Click the link and you will see that Teddy Bear looks about as much like a lion as Clacton-on-Sea looks like Copacabana Beach. Nevertheless, Mr Atkins remains convinced that a lion is still out there. He probably also thinks that Elvis is alive and well and working in the local chip shop.

The late August Bank Holiday is always the time for that celebration of Carribean culture, the Notting Hill Carnival, attended, amongst others, by new pop sensation Rita Ora (three number 1 records in a row, and that from a standing start), dressed in a most colourful ensemble.

I don’t know about you, but the totality of the colour combos against the swirly blue background is making WTF feel queasy and endangering the status of her breakfast. Rita is certainly cute enough to carry off those miniscule leather shorts, although they are a bit Rolf from The Sound of Music. Be that as it may, wearing the colours of the Jamaican National  Flag is fine if you are Usain Bolt or Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, but Rita, born in Kosovo and raised in London, is neither. WTF was surprised to learn that Rita is currently stepping out with that luminary of show biz, Rob Kardashian. Why anyone would want to get entangled with that family is more than WTF can understand. You’d be better off marrying into the Kennedys.

More Bank Holiday gaiety was contributed by the Z lister of the week,  WAG, glamour model and former Miss Great Britain, Danielle Lloyd shopping in Marbella , (below left), with a pal whose name, sadly, WTF does not know.

Call me old-fashioned, but this is not what you wear to go shopping, even in Marbella. In the case of the silicone-breasted blonde on the right, this is not what you wear  full-stop, even to go lapdancing. WTF has absolutely no idea what this girl is wearing, but those silver wing things look like the foil curtains you put in your car windows to stop the seats getting too hot and burning your bottom. There is also something of an unconvincing contrast between the tit-baring costume and the large crucifix. As for Danielle, she is always in some sort of bother. She was stripped of her Miss Great Britain title for dating one of the judges at the time (though the accusation was proved wrong in court and she was reinstated), accused (with others) of racism and bullying Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty on Celebrity Big Brother, had various relationships with footballers, including  (consecutively) three from the same team, one of whom she married, was beaten up in a nightclub, had post natal depression and had to have her breast implants removed after yet another enhancement went wrong. Danielle said tearfully “I only had the op because I wanted nicer boobs for the wedding…and now I have none”. The wedding went ahead in May sans boobs and was faithfully recorded over 10 pages of OK!    As Lady Bracknell remarked, a life filled with incident. Last weekend, Danielle went on a girls’ holiday and was pictured by the pool swigging champagne and vodka out of the bottle and (briefly) from the decolletage of our friend Miss Silicone Silver Tits and vice versa. Anyone who goes shopping in a bikini, an Indian diamanté headdress and six inch platform stilettos either has more bunions than sense or is desperate to get into the papers. Or both.

Another Bank Holiday visitor gracing our shores this week was Rihanna, fresh from her tearful appearance on Oprah where she confessed her undying love for Chris Brown. OK he beat her senseless but does that make him a bad person? (Answer – yes).  Here she is emerging from her limo on a night out.

Those boots aren’t made for walking.  How many snakes died in the name of fashion when they could have been slithering around the undergrowth with their friend the Essex lion? As WTF afficionado Jawad Ali commented on seeing the photo, it looks like a couple of Anacondas are devouring her legs. Quite apart from anything else, these are quite the ugliest boots WTF has ever seen, and appear to have been designed (and worn) for no other purpose than to attract attention, no matter how unfavourable. In fact, the whole outfit is plain tacky. Great legs though….

In this week’s edition of Designers Who Need to See a Doctor, we welcome Stacey Bendet of Alice & Olivia. 

This ensemble is a cross between the costume worn by clowns on stilts outside a circus tent and the suit worn by Batman’s foe, the Riddler.

Stacey’s suit is, of course, by Alice & Olivia and it is just terribly, terribly terrible. It is strobing like mad and should carry some sort of Government health warning. Question – where are her feet? If you happen to have a spare $495 for the jacket and $297 for the trousers, the suit is available on the Alice & Olivia website. WTF couldn’t find the tee shirt (which proclaims that “Someone Makes Your Story Even Happier”) anywhere on the web and is struggling to contain her disappointment.

WTF proudly introduces a new occasional feature, Madonna Watch, in which we keep an eye on our heroine’s travails in the name of radical feminism, human rights and, er, making loads of money whilst talking bollocks and showing us her bits. Here she is in Philadelphia at the start of her US Tour. Her twelve year old son appeared on stage with her. What boy of twelve wants to see his mother (un)dressed like this?

 Having said that, the last time WTF saw arms like that, they were on Mark Wahlberg. Maybe the audience was so transfixed by her cleavage that it wasn’t looking at her biceps, or, for that matter, listening to her pretentious waffle.  Following the criticism of the show’s use of (fake) guns, Madge issued a pre-recorded video message explaining that the guns were merely “symbols of wanting to appear strong and wanting to stop feelings that I find hurtful or damaging. In my case, it’s wanting to stop the lies and hypocrisy of the Church, the intolerance of many narrow minded cultures and societies I have had experience of  throughout my life and the pain I have felt from having my heart broken”. So that’s clear then. If you want to challenge intolerance, hypocrisy and sexism, just wave a fake  gun about and show people your arse. Madonna had more to say on the flashing stuff. She told the audience,  “Sometimes it’s easier to show your butt than your feelings”. It’s certainly easier to talk through it.

This week we have a Venice Film Festival Emperor’s New Clothes Special. First up we turn to stunning French actress and one of the Festival judges, Laetitia Casta, wearing Dolce & Gabbana.

In the photo-calls before it all got going in earnest, Laetitia wore some beautiful outfits, but for the premiere of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, she went for the tired and formulaic I-am-so-bored-I-would-rather-be-eaten-by-the-Essex-lion-than-have-to look-at-another-bra-and-panties-flashing-see-through-Designer-dress.  Which is a pity, because with some sort of lining this actually would have looked great.

However, Laetitia is as Queen Victoria in her deepest mourning period compared to actress Kate Hudson , star of the aforesaid The Reluctant Fundamentalist, wearing Atelier Versace. (Here is a challenge. Name three decent Kate Hudson movies. Thought not.) Kate is certainly very good looking and has an enviably toned body. At first sight, from across the lagoon after a few glasses of Prosecco, this might look lovely.

And then you realise that…it’s see-through. And then you realise that this isn’t just see-through, it is more see-through than see-through. And then you realise that this isn’t just more see-through than see-through, it is see-through with no knickers on see-through. And then you realise that this isn’t just see-through with no knickers on see-through, it is see-through as in peek-a-boo pubes see-through. And then you realise  that this isn’t just peek-a-boo pubes see-through, it is peek-a-boo pubes see-through as in you can see her arse cheeks see-through. 

No, I’m sorry, WTF is not having this. It’s just cheap. WTF has long been of the opinion that Versace is Italian for cheap, and this dress confirms that opinion in bucketfuls.  Dressing as a spangly Gruyere cheese with your arse cheeks saying hello to the ladies and gentlemen is just not on for the Red Carpet at a prestigious film festival, or, for that matter, anywhere. As Sir Martin Charteris, the Queen Mother’s former Principal Private Secretary remarked of  Fergie, Duchess of Pork, “Vulgar, Vulgar, Vulgar…”

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