wtffashionshark

Hallo Readers,

For nearly ten days the US has erupted in anger and disgust at the murder of George Floyd by four white cops, one of whom knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, ignoring his cries of ‘I can’t breathe’ and ‘Mama’. For the last three of those long, horrifying minutes, he was almost certainly dead. All this was captured on an onlooker’s cellphone and has rarely been off the air since, a snuff movie in real time played out on the streets of Minneapolis.  It was not just that this was only one more in a long line of black people murdered by white cops; it was the failure to arrest any of the perpetrators, even after the Police Chief had fired them, and when anyone with one working retina could see that this was a serious crime committed by one with the complicity of the other three. It was also the failure of the President, who has called for crooks to be let out, and political enemies to be jailed, to say anything about this particular incident, other than to observe that he had seen the footage and that he did not like what he had seen. So last week, black and white, young and old, took to the streets in protest. Some took advantage to loot and attack policemen. Most just expressed their fury and their desire to change, and did so peacefully.

Over the weekend, the President cowered in the White House. You can tell that things are bad when he does not spend the weekend golfing. As the crowds gathered outside, he and his family were taken down to the bunker, like they do on the telly when a madman is running amok in the West Wing, Except that in this case, the madman lives in the White House and “works”, using the word in its loosest sense, in the West Wing. By Monday, stung by the criticism of his hiding away, even though he had been, he turned into the lovechild of General Patton and Kim Jong Un. Now it was all about ‘domination’, and ‘strength’  and ‘battlespaces’, and calling in the military. Military police were then deployed to clear peaceful demonstrators out of the public spaces in front of The People’s House, using pepper spray gas and rubber bullets and shields, while he made a speech in the Rose Garden about being the ‘President of Law And Order’. The only connection Trump has with Law And Order is that half the people in his address book have faced criminal charges and he himself is an un-indicted co-conspirator referred to in court as ‘Individual 1′. Following his speech, with the air in the Rose Garden heavy with chemical gas, he walked two blocks to a church that had been partially burnt out by some rioters the previous night.  Whereupon, he held up a bible (upside down) to the photographers,  and er, went home again. Not so much General Patton as knitting pattern – for a baby’s romper. This ridiculous stunt backfired bigly, with bishops, generals, journalists and politicians expressing their disgust and the rest of us laughing our heads off. We laughed even more when Propaganda Barbie, his new, ever-so-blonde, ever-so-girly, ever-so-Christian Press Secretary, compared his visit to a Church he did not enter, where he met no-one and uttered no prayer, as akin to Winston Churchill visiting bombed-out homes in the Blitz. Not really, love. In 1940, the Brits were under attack from the Germans, not their own army and their own Prime Minister.

Trump has yet to condemn police brutality against blacks. He has yet to recognise the fear every black man, no matter how well educated or successful, experiences whenever a police officer approaches him. He has yet to acknowledge the social and economic legacy of four hundred years. He talks of  electoral postal fraud, but not of the thousands of black people deliberately disenfranchised in Republican states. But then this is a man who literally cannot tell one end of the Bible from the other. His only interest is in retaining plower, however he can hang onto it, and no matter whom he deceives, hurts or exploits in the process. Otherwise, it will be him facing a jury……

*************************************************************

Here’s the thing about the subject of this week’s selection for the fashion retrospective, superstar Madonna. There are always bits of her on show. Indeed, many of us are more familiar with her bits than our own. She is like a gynaecological textbook for the uninitiated. And added to that, she is also very annoying, always spouting high-minded but fatuous nonsense as a justification for flashing her all.  Only she could have made a video about the dangers of Covid19 from her bathtub. Still, Material Girl remains WTF’s go-to karaoke number, and you have to admit that over the years she has knocked out some good tunes and is as fit as a fiddle.

We start in November 2012 with what is a stage costume, but even so. Behold one of the quintessential Minge Moments, as Madge hit the stage. Careful now. This is BAD.

Ouch! Your eyes start to water even looking at the photo. That is the Full Monty of waxing. WTF once had a Brazilian wax in Hong Kong. She was still jet-lagged, having flown in that morning from the UK (Those were the days, Planes, Remember them? Those silver things in the sky). Luckily she was so zonked out that she slept though most of it, but during the times when she was awake, it bloody hurt).

March 2013 saw Madge at GLAAD, the organisation championing  LGBT rights. She was protesting gay boys being banned from the Scouts.

Why the fingerless gloves and the black tights? Lord Baden- Powell must have been turning in his grave. 

In May 2013, Madge attended the Met Gala in New York, wearing Givenchy. The theme that year was ‘punk’.

If Cleopatra went to a fancy dress party as a dominatrix in pink fuck-me shoes, this is what she would look like.

In August 2014, Madge went to stay in a friend’s yacht in Cannes, as you do. But despite the sunny weather, or perhaps because of it, she was swaddled from head to toe in truly terrible clothes.

There was much to dislike here, including the Adidas jacket and the floral petticoat, but WTF’s principal disapprobation was reserved for the Chanel fingerless gloves and the hideous hat. Was Madge auditioning for the role of Maude in a remake of The Golden Girls? She would certainly not have looked out of place in the queue to secure a good table for the earlybird dinner special.

February 2015 saw Madge at the Grammys, wearing Givenchy.

Madge was dressed as a Spanish fluffer complete with beaver bow, to be sent in to titillate the bull in an unusual variation before the Toreador gets busy with the cape. What was not titillating was the rear view. And when WTF says rear, she means rear.

WTF is coming to the view that Madge is an enthusiastic masochist. Why else would she wear this ultra-snug arse-harness? Her bum cheeks look like they are going through a cheese slicer.

Here is Madge in April 2015 wearing Alexander Wang,

Spiderwoman goes couture. And she has those fingerless gloves on again. Madonna, pet – people get older. your hands get older. Just slather on the Clarins Jeunesse de Mains.

In May 2016, Madge hit the Red Carpet at the Met Gala, with more or less everything out on show. 

In a post on Instagram at the time, Madge explained that her outfit was a “political statement,” fighting ageism and the idea that women stop being sexy at a certain age. There is a technical term for this. It called is ‘bollocks’. Her arse was out as well, but when was it ever in? The whole thing seems to have been inspired by the cartoon drawings of an Ahsoka slavegirl.

A year later, in May 2017, Madge was back on the Met Gala Red Carpet, this time wearing Moschino.

Dear Lord. Donald Trump would probably like this, given its overtly military overtones. Demi Moore as GI Jane would have worn it to dine in the Officers’ Mess, once she’d stopped wiping out troops off Iraqis single-handed.

Although Demi would probably not have bothered with the long leather gloves and mouth grill. WTF has but two questions. What the actual fuck? And why?

In August 2018 Madonna went to the VMAs in New York, inexplicably dressed as a Bedouin tribeswoman, complete with lethal pointed headgear. 

This is not a nod to Bedouin culture, this is an appropriation of Bedouin culture, but as we know Madge doesn’t do things by halves, although frankly a half of an half of a half would usually be more than enough.  

Finally, in May 2019, Madonna was launching her new Madame X tour and, for reasons that WTF confesses she cannot fully fathom, she was sporting an eyepatch and a coat of many colours by Versace.

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum. Long John Silver was alive and well and had regrown a leg.

This week’s It’s Got To Go comes from WTF aficionado Leslie from Lisson Grove, who is on a roll. This time, it is more a case of It Will Have To Go, as Leslie is living in fear of thr war stories people will tell about their lockdown experiences. He says

‘People will be only too ready to socialise again; cocktail parties, dinners,  etc. But there walks amongst us a great threat. These people move around showing absolutely no symptoms, which go completely undetected. Until….. quite innocently and with your guard down, you ask……… what did you do during the lockdown?……. Too late…….the trap has been sprung…..the conversation goes thus…..

“Oh, I learned to speak Swahili, listen, I can recite the Lords Prayer”………

“Oh, I’ve taken up the bassoon, I have my music with me, let me play you a Kurkistan dirge”…..

“Bunty and I have learned to sing all the duets from the Savoy Operas, do you have a piano?”….

The lockdown bores are waiting and their moment will not be denied them. It’s Got To Go.

OK Readers, that’s your lot for this week. Please keep on sending in your comments, as well as your excellent suggestions for It’s Got To Go and your nominations for the fashion celebrity retrospective. Let us meet again next Friday. Be good.  STAY INDOORS IF YOU CAN AND WASH YOUR HANDS. x