wtffashionshark

Hallo Readers,

When WTF was at school (roughly around the same time as dinosaurs roamed the earth and Arsenal had a defence) we all dressed the same. We wore Laura Ashley smocks in twee floral patterns, jeans and clogs, platform or otherwise. Our hair was straight and shoulder length like Ozzie Osborne with a centre parting. (It was an all-girls school. Just in case you were wondering). Over this, we wore super-smelly Afghan coats which stank like an old goat on heat, especially in the rain. Some of us were taller, some of us were smaller, some of us were fatter and some of us were thinner. Some of us had complexions like milkmaids and some of us had Clearasil delivered by tanker. But basically, we looked more or less identical. WTF was reminded of this on perusing the Red Carpet at the many Award ceremonies held around now. Look at the pictures, whether here, on other blogsites or the more-addictive-than-crack-cocaine Mail Online and you will see the same dresses again and again. The actress is different but the dress and the teeny-tiny body is not. Everybody wins. The design house dresses the star in its latest creation which it lends for the occasion.  The snaps go across the world. Critics either gush like Old Faithful or carp and take the piss, but the designers get free publicity (much cheaper than a billboard or a magazine ad), the stars get a free dress  for the night and the stylists stay employed. Take Gucci. In the last month their strapless evening dress with loo roll holder top featured on no less than 3 Red Carpets in a fortnight. First we had Kate Beckinsale at the Golden Globes in the pink version…..

Then we had Bipasha Basu at the Stardust Awards in Mumbai in the lime-green version….

And then we had Gracie Otto at the AACTA Awards in Sydney, also in the lime green version….

It is Groundhog Day without Sonny and Cher. At which point one is compelled to ask why they bother? If everyone is wearing the same bloody Gucci freebie gown then there is nothing special about it.   And please do not get me started on the Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer collection which involves women dressed as coloured chessboards. The word ubiquitous does not begin to sum it up because everyone has been photographed in a version of it with the result that we are all heartily sick of it even before the first snowdrops have popped out of the ground.  Here is just one example, Juno Temple , wearing a green version at the Sundance Film Festival.

The couture creations below are much worse than either the Gucci or the Vuitton. Some stick-thin harpy with Calvin Klein on speed dial and who dresses like a demented Carrie Bradshaw has persuaded these beautiful and successful women to leave the house looking like a bovine creature or a tart from a dockside alley. Why on earth do they allow themselves to be treated like this?

This is Kate Bosworth at the Sundance Film Festival (actually, you probably would have worked that one out for yourselves, seeing as she is standing in front of a backdrop that says Sundance Film Festival) wearing Calvin Klein . WTF tweeted this snap (@WTF_EEK, what do you mean you don’t follow me?) but Kate never made it into last week’s post. My apologies.

Kate is dressed as a pantomime cow and is also wearing the ugliest pair of bootees that WTF has ever seen with a matching white belt and, for reasons that a raft of rocket scientists would fail to figure out, even working round the clock in shifts, a white collar. It is like a carnivore’s acid trip. As the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman remarked to the snotty Rodeo Drive shop assistants who had snubbed her earlier in the movie, “Big Mistake. Huge”. Meanwhile, Kate’s head look as if it has come from someone else’s body. Can you have a brown cow lollipop?

Next to the AACTA Awards in Sydney where Gemma Arterton walked the Red Carpet wearing Vivienne Westwood, accessorised by co-star Jeremy Renner.

WTF is a great fan of Dame Viv but this dress is a dud. Not only is it supremely unflattering, particularly around the chest, hips and everywhere else but it looks like recycled turkey foil. You know what I mean. In these days of thrift, you buy an extra-extra-large roll of turkey foil for Christmas Day, use it, and then cannot bear to throw it away, so you rinse it under the tap, or even give it a perfunctory scrub, fold it up and bring it out later, whereupon you notice that it has become discoloured and manky. This dress is the sartorial equivalent of the discoloured and manky turkey foil. The shoes, by Dior, are lovely although they have nothing to do with the dress. On the other hand, Jeremy looks rather good.

Now off we go to the SAG Awards where nastiness was in abundance. Let us start with Jane Lynch off Glee wearing David Meister.

WTF knows that Jane is musical but was previously unaware that she was about to star as Brunhilde in Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Bayreuth Festival. There can be no other reason for the leather studded breastplate. Although actually, that is not strictly true. The explanation could be that David Meister is taking the piss. Frightful.

Oh dear. Oh very dear.  Here is Anne Hathaway in Giambattista Valli.

Oh yawn, yawn, yawn. Stay on the line, caller, whilst WTF finds some matchsticks to prop her eyes open. Yet another obligatory see-through skirt thing over the obligatory mini skirt thing. More to the point, it does not fit Anne who looks like Barbie mourning Ken. This sheer skirt nonsense shows no sign of waning, and WTF will be forced to continue her mission against it because it is ugly, and worse, it is boring. To be frank, when the photographer behind you, whose outfit probably cost 0.5% of your own couture effort, looks better than you do, you more than deserve to be in WTF and your stylist deserves a slap, a P45 and  then another slap. 

We need some colour. Here is Kaley Cuoco wearing Romona Keveza.

Yes, we have another loo roll holder. Could it be any frillier? Could it be any sillier? WTF cannot make up her mind whether the ditziness of the dress is worse than the little girl silk pumps or the terrible drowned-rat hair.

And here is another waste of scissors in the form of Morena Baccarin off Homeland wearing Beirut designer Basil Soda.

Never mind Basil Soda, WTF needed a whisky and soda when she saw the pictures. Morena needs a new stylist and preferably a stylist with some style instead of this one, who has shoe-horned her into a black strapless sheath featuring some peek-a-boo thigh panels and a pair of genitalia curtains with some schmutter by way of a train creeping across the carpet in search of a getaway. And if WTF sees that bloody Angelina-lite pose again, she will scream.

Talking of screaming, this is Sigourney Weaver wearing Lanvin.

This is just so terribly, terribly terrible. Someone has sewn a cushion cover onto the dress and used Sigourney as the stuffing. The thing that slithered out of John Hurt in Alien looked better than this and whilst it may be the case that In Space No-one Can Hear You Scream, WTF’s squawk on catching sight of Sigourney was audible from the furthest reaches of the Galaxy. It has now come to light that Sigourney elected to wear the dress back to front, and, as fashionistas everywhere will know, wearing couture outfits back to front always ends in tears.  Who can forget Celine Dion at the Oscars in 1999 with her white Dior tuxedo the wrong way round and looking like an idiot? Admittedly the hat and the sunglasses did not help matters, but she now has the dubious distinction of wearing one of the worst Oscar outfits of all time, right up there with Cher and Bjork.

As for Sigourney, could her frock have looked any worse worn the right way round? Either way, she needed a bra, but what puzzles WTF is that if the dress looked shit from the front and looked shit from the back, then surely the answer was to ask Lanvin for another dress? Preferably one that did not flatten her tits flatter than Nebraska.

OK Readers, that’s your lot for this week. Keep hitting the Comment button. Be Good.