wtffashionshark

Hallo Readers,

On 24 September 1988, WTF witnessed one of the most thrilling sporting events she has ever seen – the Olympic Men’s 100m Final in Seoul. The medallists all finished in under 10 seconds with Ben Johnson of Canada running a world record 9.79, Carl Lewis of the US,  9.92 and Britain’s Linford Christie, 9.93. Dennis Mitchell, also from the US, ran 10.04. The whole thing made the heart sing. Except it was a sham. 48 hours later, Johnson was disqualified, pumped fuller of anabolic steroids than a busload of bodybuilders out on a binge. Lewis, who was then awarded the gold medal, had in fact run out of his lane several times and should also have been disqualified. Which is why, on 26 September 1988, WTF fell out of love with track athletics and, with some honourable exceptions, has never really trusted any results since.  Of the four athletes mentioned above, only Mitchell went through his career without failing a drugs test and it was 11 years before anyone actually ran 9.79 whilst “clean”. WTF had fallen out of love with field athletics long before 1988, when what used to be known as the Iron Curtain countries, East Germany in particular, sent out women with muscles like watermelons, hair sprouting from places where hair is not supposed to grow and voices deeper than Barry White. So the news that Russian athletes have been cheating is hardly  a surprise. That there is State-sponsored cheating, backed up with bribes, or that IAAF bigwigs are alleged to have trousered huge sums of money, is hardly a surprise either. Putin is not known for being cuddly and most Sports Governing Bodies are as much use as tits on a fish, its officers high on power and many corrupt as hell.

The new President of the IAAF, Sebastian Coe, was a brilliant athlete and WTF is no doubt that he never took banned substances and never accepted a bribe. He also organised a fabulous London Olympics, except that many Russian medallists were so full of drugs, they practically glowed in the dark and former IAAF President Lamine Diack, once described by Coe as the IAAF’s “spiritual leader”, stands accused of receiving €1m from Russia for overlooking that fact. Also implicated in jiggery-pokery are Diack’s son and other IAAF officials, all enriched for turning a blind eye to these chemical con-artists. There have been various exposés on drugs and corruption over the years, most recently in the Sunday Times this August. However, the IAAF simply denounced the articles and Coe described the Sunday Times feature as “a declaration of war on our sport”. He changed his tune this week only after the World Doping Agency producing a damning report into Russians using drugs and the French authorities announced they were investigating Diack and his cohorts for corruption.  Sport has become big business, and big business means money, lots of it – for the stars who become celebrities, for the countries who stage the sporting events, for the rogue members of the Governing Bodies with accounts in the name of their cat in some Swiss Banque de Dodgy. It is time for Coe to stop posturing and pandering to his peers and to start scrubbing out the Augean stables. And whilst he is about it, he might set a good example to some of his colleagues by relinquishing his role as “ambassador” for sports giant Nike, a role that is a clear conflict of interest. The sporting dream has become a nightmare, albeit some of us woke up  that September weekend in 1988. 

We begin our survey of the dress dung heap with Mad Men actress January Jones wearing Lela Rose.

Hate it. The top suggests that a sofa has mated with an ostrich whilst the “trousers” resemble a couple of oversized condoms. WTF even hates the hair and makeup. Just terribly, terribly terrible.

This is teenage singer – yes, it’s her again – Tallia Storm wearing Atelier Villaba.

This is less an outfit and more a  ragbag of fabrics that have landed randomly on Tallia’s person. Her shadow looks like a trail of poo, which is, to say the least, apt. This may sound old-fashioned but there is something wrong about a 17-year-old girl flashing her knickers in public.

Next up, we have one of our regulars, Miley Cyrus, wearing Ulyana Sergeenko.

The original outfit had the skirt paired with a sheer but pretty lacy body. However, Miley has personalised it by cropping the body into a bra top and adding another line of flowers, like a Hawaiian hula dancer. As for the shoes, they would be de trop in a Benidorm bingo hall…

Now we have a couple of duds from the Glamour Woman of the Year Awards, both top designers wearing their own creations and thus falling squarely into the category of Physician Heal Thyself. First up is Vera Wang.

It is difficult to tell where the hair stops and the furry skirt starts. Vera seems to have drawn inspiration from the story of Jacob, who passed himself off to his blind father Isaac as his more hirsute brother Esau, by covering his arms and neck with goatskins. And those shoes are an abomination.

We also have usual suspect Jeremy Scott, Creative Head of Moschino.

What is his suit made of? It puts WTF in mind of that non-stick liner for baking trays you buy from Lakeland. And his shirt is almost at a right angle with the whole thing reflected in the glare of the shoes. The coat, however, is tops.

WTF could have picked any model from the Victoria Secret’s Show Afterparty as they all looked titsy, tawdry and tacky. As WTF aficionado Sally points out, the whole show is titsy, tawdry and tacky, basically a Miss World competition where the contestants do not get to express their desire to help sick kiddies.  Kendall Jenner, who now appears to have reached the top of the modelling tree, looked the worst, clad in Versace.

You know when people say, “she’d look good in a bin bag?”. That hypothesis has just been disproved and there seems to be a pair of minge-bubbles which WTF finds plain weird.

Actress Bai Ling went out and about in Hollywood dressed (?) like this.

She is blending into the décor of some swanky Hollywood hotel but, alas, we can still see her. This is Gladiator meets peekaboo radiator…until she turns round.

Whereupon you catch sight of what seems to be a golden buttock-basket. It is time for Bai Ling to stay indoors. Indefinitely.

This is singer-songwriter and fashion muse Erykah Badu, wearing Stéphane Rolland at the Soul Train awards in Las Vegas.

The back is actually rather striking.

Why then does the dress need the sleeved batwing cape and the daft top hat like Mr Darcy popping off to Pemberley?

Finally there is no way that WTF can omit the insufferable Kim Kardashian wearing Givenchy, that most toxic of all fashion combinations.

The good news is that Kim is wearing panties and a flesh coloured bra. The bad news is that we can see them and everything else, save for her ankles which have mysteriously been masked with opaque fabric like the legs on a Victorian piano. At the risk of distressing you, Readers, WTF is compelled to ask whether she is cushioning her enormous bump, covering her crotch or, er, fiddling with her fanny. Whichever it is, it is unsightly.

This week’s It‘s Got to Go comes from WTF aficionado Andrew Purcell from Texas, he of the excellent weekly comments. Shocked and amused in equal measure by last week’s offering in this section, the scrote tote, Andrew sent in this monstrosity.

These plastic bull testicles are hung from the trailer hitch of your pick up truck in Texas. You can buy them in a wide choice of colours, from realistic tans and browns through pastels and winding up at bright fluorescent primary colours that glow in the dark. Andrew is anxious to assure WTF that he has not bought, and will never buy, a set of the said testicles. There are only 4 words. It’s Got To Go.

OK Readers, that’s your lot for this week. The comments  last week were of top quality so keep them coming and do not stint on your splendid suggestions for It’s Got To Go. Let us meet again next Friday. Be good x