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The Metropolitan Museum of Getting Rejected by Athletes
Good morning, Messketeers!
Or at least, good morning to me as I’m writing this to you all from aboard a wifi-less train at the butt crack of dawn. As paid subs have already heard me talk about at length, I’ve spent this week visiting a friend who lives in Western Massachusetts and turning said visit into an unofficial writer’s residency. By which I mean I did the exact same thing I do at home in Brooklyn just in a brand new locale. But man does obsessively scrolling the Daily Mail side bar hit different in a new state.
Unfortunately, Fran could not make the journey with me as my friend is the owner of a very feisty cat named Sheryl who I’m pretty sure is a Scottish wild cat masquerading as a tabby and who most definitely would not take kindly to Fran’s extreme gregariousness towards all creatures. So I am excited to be reunited with her shortly and for her to be so exhausted from four solid days of extreme playing with her doggie pals that she sleeps soundly for another four days straight.
This trip also reminded me that despite roughly a decade spent off the road, I do in fact love driving. Although I find that as I slip ever further into crone-dom, I think way more about how dangerous the heavy machinery I’m operating actually is whereas when I was a teenager with a driver’s permit I was blithely oblivious to moving 70 mph in a steel death trap. Growing up, I had a roughly ~30 minute commute to and from my high school in rural Maine every day and there was nothing I enjoyed more than entering a total fugue state while careening through backroads and singing along to various CDs at the top of my lungs. An experience I got to perfectly replicate this week with some minor technological updates, but has still got to be one of the top ten feelings in human existence. I also got to reconnect and have dinner with a handful of the gals who were in my Artist’s Way group at the beginning of the year, and hearing what they’re all up to now felt like a real full-circle moment as we start to wind down on 2023.
Anyway, I am writing this to you on roughly 4 hours of sleep, so I’m going to get into it before things get any kookier than they already typically are. But first, here’s your weekly reminder that I remain, by and large, unemployed. So if you have ever laughed at a single little jokey joke in this email, I’m going to need you to sign on to become my patron immediately. But if your financial situation simply can’t support it, I’d still love to see your gorgeous faces over in the Discord so we can chop it up on the daily.
Ok, these celebs aren’t going to roast themselves!
To start today’s newsletter off on a high note, my long-held belief in the power of booing the rich and famous has once again been proven to be unequivocally correct. This is like calling them nepo babies on steroids. Elon got booed ONE TIME. One. Singular. Time. And it sent him into a full-blown mental breakdown. Imagine if we were doing this everywhere he goes. It costs us absolutely nothing to inflict this type of public humiliation on them and make their every day lives just a little bit more uncomfortable. And while it obviously changes nothing about the positively criminal power and wealth imbalance going on here, it does have the power to absolutely shatter these overinflated egos and for that alone I firmly believe we need to engage in such heckling every chance we get.
As readers who have been with me for a minute will recall, one of my fav genres of paparazzi photo is celebs being absolutely battered by various weather events. I previously brought this to your attention when Mick Jagger was being dramatically swept away by a gust of wind outside of the Palace of Versailles and a reader demanded in the Discord that I include one such image in every edition of Mess moving forward. But alas, the joy of such a photograph is that they’re a true rarity — a needle in a haystack. All of which is just to say, please savor this moment of LeAnn Rimes caught in the eye of a tornado of one because who knows when we will be so blessed again.
While this is quite clearly the hundredth example of Travis Kelce slapping his name on a random product in order to make a quick buck, that’s actually not what brought these incredible Rewind It 10 products into my consciousness this week. That honor belongs to Fat Joe who has been bald for as long as I’ve known him, which made me wonder what he was doing selling a box dye preying on men’s hairline insecurities, and then I realized that this product is apparently just intended for darkening mustaches and beards so that the user appears younger? Has a more defined jawline? Looks exactly like a marionette? Unclear. But what I do know is that nothing has brought me as much joy as this Photoshop blur-tooled to hell image of DJ Khaled looking like a beautiful porcelain doll in a very long time.
This week, I also finally got insight on Hailey Bieber’s kitchen art, which some of you might recall has long weighed heavy on my heart. Well, I sort of got insight. At least, I now know the backstory behind them, but I’m not sure it makes all that much more sense of what’s going on here. In a new YouTube video about her kitchen, which features TWO air fryers for when she's cooking things that “don't fit in one,” obviously, she says in regards to these two DIY art pieces, “I like the story behind these because they were in another part of the house, they were plain, they didn’t have writing on them. And then my husband decided to put his own spin on them, which I thought was actually really, really fun.” Really, really fun, indeed. I truly should’ve known that the hand of Bieber was behind these overly literal Etsy specials, especially after the custom Idiot Box text message wall art the other week.
Speaking of the tasteless, there’s something so funny to me about dubbing Pharrell “annoying” for making a million dollar handbag. What people should actually be annoyed about in regards to this purse that literally only Rihanna is ever going to carry isn’t the price tag, but rather how wildly the price tag does not reflect the actual materials being used in its construction. For those curious, the leather is crocodile, the chain and hardware are “gold” (which almost certainly means gold-plated), and apparently the lock is encrusted in diamonds and purportedly why you’re being asked to pay seven figures for the same old Speedy. Ok! Encrust this whole thing in a diamond monogram print and then we can start talking.
Sloppy Seconds readers were treated on Tuesday to my live reading of a poem excerpted from Megan Fox’s new book, Pretty Boys are Poisonous. I am now positively obsessed and will be reading more very wild, very violent poems exclusively for paid subs in the very near future. But we are gathered here today not to speak of Fox’s poesy and authorial aspirations, but rather her choice to wear these very shiny nipple covers under a totally sheer top. As I said in Tuesday’s email about another D-lister’s odd choice in pasties, despite what this newsletter may have you believe, I don’t think everyone needs to necessarily have their boobs fully visible under a fully sheer top all of the time. But I do think it makes more sense to either just go with a brassiere or let the girls be totally free and stop engaging in these weird modesty half-steps. Especially in a scenario like this one, where all the pasties are doing is drawing more attention to what’s going on underneath this top and making it look like Megan’s vaseline’d her areolas.
Moving right along, I would like to touch down on this “huddle” for a moment because that is the word Page Six is using to obfuscate the fact that these two are absolutely not dating and nothing romantic in the slightest is going on betwixt them. If anything, Kim is just very obviously trying to enlist Odell to be the model for her next Skims boxers campaign. Because according to the outlet’s source they “talked all night” but it also “didn’t seem flirty at all.” Cool huddle, guys. Of course, this dating speculation is also yet another Kris Jenner special, akin to her attempts to manifest Tom Brady as Kim’s future beau.
But regardless, I mostly just wanted to bring up this birthday party 1. to talk about the invitations Odell sent for it and 2. to remind everyone what Lena Dunham once said about him, which is also the inspiration for today’s newsletter sub-header. First of all, the football player invited his A-list guests to this party by sending them all — according to another Page Six source — “a bouquet from a bodega, literally…Who sends ten orange carnations to A-list celebs? Send orange roses at least.” To add insult to injury, the carnations weren’t “even in a case,” but just a “paper wrap.” The disrespect!!! Secondly, this entire event and the internet’s response to it also resurfaced that old Lenny Letter interview from 2016 between Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer (surprise, surprise) where Lena made the very interesting proclamation that OBJ was rude to her at the Met Gala because he didn’t want to fuck her…………leading to the incredible statement that the event instead “should be called the Metropolitan Museum of Getting Rejected by Athletes." Also an excellent reminder that not everything needs to be shared with the public and sometimes it’s ok to just take your Ls in private.
As for what Kim wore to that birthday party and the CFDA Awards directly before it, I have almost nothing to say about these very nondescript, nearly identical, custom Chrome Hearts gowns covered from head-to-toe in their signature crosses except what a waste of a a bunch of hook and eye closures going right over the derriere. Leave a couple strategically undone next time.
Thankfully, Kendall — or at least Jacquemus — gets it. As I’ve repeatedly said, 2024 is shaping up to be the year of the crack. Although why these Christmas lights were not fashioned into a thong truly beats me.
As for her look at the LACMA Film + Art Gala, again, I’m trying to look at the bright side here which is that while this may be one more neon pink Balenciaga look, at least it is a different silhouette than the 500 other neon pink Balenciaga looks we’ve previously seen her in. But especially right on the heels of Kendall’s Marilyn Monroe Halloween costume, this is still wayyyy too similar to the “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” gown for my comfort. Let the woman rest. At least Mert Alas understands the power of accentuating the posterior and that a fully unzipped dress is the new fully fastened. However, the spray tan-toned Skims peeking out of the bottom really ruins it for me. And if we have to turn this plandid moment into an ad campaign, at the very least do a tight shot on the intergluteal cleft and let me see the branding while being minorly scandalized.
Because this entire family has their boot firmly on our necks with the relentless rollout of these product launches, Kim unveiled her new Swarovski collab with a big bedazzled blowout in NYC and while this outfit is getting much closer to how she should be dressing on the regular, it still falls tragically short. Again we get the poor choice in Skims underwear, this time a Swarovski x Skims branded boy short despite the fact that this collection is filled with bedazzled thongs that could’ve worked just as well. I will say that while I hate blister patch boob covers, at least Kim’s are not shiny and she seems to have used body makeup to blur the edges into her flesh in a slightly more natural way. If we must cover up while creating the illusion of nudity, I suppose this is the way to do it. She’s also somehow managed to make Swarovski look very cheap here and I think it has to do with the scale of the rhinestone. While small crystals read very Judith Leiber or J.Lo’s Starbucks cups, the larger they get the more Shein things start to feel. This is also really just a riff off of that Dolce bustier she reissued as part of the Ciao, Kim collection. You see what I mean about the way all brands she works for ending up just becoming an extension of her own fast fashion? I was also reminded recently that this is the umpteenth time this family has copied d.bleu.dazzled, the brand responsible for literally everything rhinestone-encrusted Beyoncé wears, as well as every other major pop star in the world. Destiney, the brand’s designer, is also very much the intellectual property holder on bedazzled flesh-tone everything. And considering she’s already sued Khloé over copying her work at Good American and won, this seems particularly flagrant and stupid on Kim’s part. Also, shame on Swarovski. Because even if Kim doesn’t know/care about knocking off yet another Black woman’s work, they certainly should know better than to slight their longtime professional collaborator like this. And judging by the comment sections on every Skims and Swarovski post promoting this collection, it seems clear the public isn’t fooled by this grift either. I look forward to Destiney once again walloping this family in court.
The above outfit is also particularly tragic when you see the other drastically more nude designs from the collection her guests wore to the same event. Teyana Taylor’s (right), in particular, I thought was just simply a better version of Kim’s top. The faux tenuousness of these ropes of rhinestones creating the threat of a wardrobe malfunction that keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat. Even Ashley Graham’s look (left), which is just yet another iteration on the same old underwear / fishnet gown combo we’ve seen all year long, still does a better job at selling me on this collab than the person whose job it is to sell it. But it’s Indya Moore’s full nude illusion attire (center) that is the real harbinger of the Emperor’s New Clothes to come and the dangling diamond pendant directly over the vag feels like a particular stroke of genius.
Of course, the fact that all of this is just knock-offs should come as no surprise as this family has truly never had an original thought in their lives and depend exclusively on their ability to poorly replicate the ideas of more creative people around them. Which explains why they are once again doing straight-up Yeezy copycats. I thought Khloé making an Etsy version of Kanye’s necklace with the kids’ names on it was bizarre, but this is downright freakish. If Kim’s new ad campaign looks familiar, that’s because it is absolutely identical to the first Yeezy collection runway show choreographed by Vanessa Beecroft. Sure, you could argue that a bunch of women standing around in bodysuits isn’t an idea anyone can copyright, but I think the side-by-side really speaks for itself. And because the consumer is not allowed to rest their wallet for a single second, Kylie is already rolling out her second Khy drop, a week after her first flop, and this one also really could not look more like Yeezy x Gap products, down to the goddamn colorways. Someone on Twitter also said the jacket is a perfect Entire Studios replica, which is a brand I was not familiar with before this, but after googling I can certainly see the similarities. Is it really this hard to come up with new ideas? And if it is, is that not proof that this is not the right line of work for them???
Outside of the relentless onslaught of half-baked product drops, Kylie also announced this week that she’s added a new dog to her collection, a dachshund named Moo Pants. For those, like me, keeping track, that means Kylie is now the proud mother of 12 dogs. Twelve dogs we see every six months or so from a distance on her Instagram Stories. At this point, she should honestly take up mushing and hook the greyhounds up to a sled so she can pull herself around Calabasas. Hey, at least it would mean she’d stop taking 5 minute private jet flights from one side of Los Angeles to the other. (That’s not a joke, she literally does that on the regular.) The Daily Mail also taught me this week that, in 2019, Los Angeles County legally changed it so you are only allowed to have 4 dogs in your home unless you are a licensed facility, such as a groomer, kennel or pet shop, which makes me wonder if Kylie has found a way to get some sort of loophole licensing certifying her as one of those or if she’s just paying some jumbo fine for owning three times the legal limit of canine. Either way, a very fun fact.
To wrap up today’s edition, let’s chat about a few things I absolutely loved before I scram. When I first laid eyes upon Lenny Kravitz at the LACMA Art + Film Gala, I was immediately taken with his deeply aughts flare to point-toe heel ratio. And this delight was only taken to new heights when I showed this image to a friend and she immediately proclaimed that he’s dressed exactly like Victoria Beckham from that era. And so he is!!!!
It was also the CMAs this week and while I did not know a single person on that red carpet, including Priscilla Block pictured here, I do have enormous respect and admiration for her choice to not only wear this extremely high-visibility crossing guard get-up complete with a caution scrunchie, but to also bring a traffic cone prop along with her. I was so intrigued by this ensemble I had to do some googling, and apparently her choice to turn the red carpet into a construction site is an inside joke with her fans that started when she was on tour and didn’t have anything to wear so she pulled over to a gas station and bought a safety vest, according to The Tennessean. She now regularly wears this ensemble in concert, as do her fans, and she even has a fully blinged-out version. Truly iconic branding.
And ever the fashion trailblazer, Law Roach was the walking embodiment of the Mess spirit in Luar at the CFDA Awards. While I’m a big fan of Luar’s work in general, as well as the choice to attend any red carpet in tighty-whities and fishnets, I just wish there was a touch more polish around the midsection here. I would’ve loved to have seen a boxer brief that felt a little more structured, or even made into a hot pant out of the same suiting fabric. At the very least, I feel like the button-up should’ve been tucked all the way into this elastic waistband. But regardless, I am fully on-board with the concept of a reverse mullet menswear maxi skirt.
Ok time for me to make like Paulina Porizkova and shut the hell up already before I give away the best of Mess going behind the paywall for Tuesday’s edition of Sloppy Seconds.
And after a week apart, Fran and I have got selfies to take and walks to ramble on
So I’ll see you back here next week, my fellow swamp creatures!!
That’s all, folks! This weekly brain dump of toxic fashion sludge delivered straight into the cess pool of your inbox has unleashed its final installment of radioactive idiocy. But as you’re clearly a Chernobyl stan, send your Geiger counter off the charts by signing up for a paid subscription and then circle back here on Tuesday for a lethal dose of Sloppy Seconds. If you’d like to expose your friends to the sartorial nuclear fallout contained in this email as well, please sign them up for a free subscription at your earliest possible convenience. Or, if your money was liquidated in the fallout, then go on and dive headfirst into the ~MESS DISCORD~ where almost 700 Messketeers are still grappling with the explosive ideas contained within this email. And since your attire likely disintegrated in the blast, why not pick up some new MESS MERCH to clothe your naked body.
As always, if you can’t afford to pay for more, just ask me about getting a comped subscription. I promise, it’s no big deal. I do it all the time. And if you send over a screenshot of your donation to any abortion or bail fund, your next month of Mess is on me.
Cheerio, old chaps!
