Ciao!
As daylight saving approaches, it’s already starting to stay lighter outside for longer and my mood has instantly lifted tenfold!!!!
I randomly started listening to two albums from my youth again this week. One is The Strokes’ Is This It, which I have not listened to since driving around in my car in high school. And the other is Explosions in the Sky which I’ve revived in yet another desperate bid to recreate the perfect writing conditions of my collegiate library experience as I’m pretty sure I wrote every single essay my Junior year to the soundtrack of All of a Sudden I Miss Someone. Which if you, like me, need music with no words to write, I highly recommend. Ann Friedman also has a great Spotify playlist she shared in her newsletter once called “writing brain” that has over 24 hours worth of tunes that fit that description.
Outside of some light sonic time travel, I once again enjoyed a leisurely mid-week fancy freelancer lunch with my friend Christina who is visiting from Paris. We went to Via Carota, as all the celebs do. I somehow have never been there before, but I certainly get the hype. We ordered so much and all of it was so good. I also started watching Couple to Throuple last weekend for a laugh with friends and immediately became obsessed and have now consumed the entire season. What a delightful car crash of a show. I am absolutely repulsed by every single type of person and interpersonal dynamic depicted on that program. What the vast majority of these couples need is therapy, not a third. I also feel like such a prude because I was actually shocked by how much nudity and blanketed sexual acts they’re allowed to show on TV now, and in extremely high definition at that! But if you’re looking for a polycule-based reality competition, I do highly recommend.
In Sloppy Seconds this week, we talked at great length about everything going on at Paris Fashion Week, including the butt bongos of Vivienne Westwood, the Coperni bag made out of air, Kim K’s Balenciaga price tag, and Louis Vuitton’s rare show of common decency. We also asked the question on the tip of everyone’s tongue: Where’s Princess Kate? And we rounded things out by bullying a handful of billionaires. If any of that sounds like music to your ears, make sure to grab a subscription and catch up on all the latest. It’s also the Oscars this weekend which means a big red carpet round up is headed towards paid Messketeers’ inboxes next week and you know you need to know who’s going to wind up on my (best) worst dressed list….
I also always appreciate a more casual endorsement of this newsletter whether it’s a forward to a friend, a share on social media, a teeny, tiny shout out in your own newsletter, or even just sending me a virtual high five. Every single Messketeer I’ve ever interacted with IRL or online as been an absolute dream and it’s a pleasure to write all these dumb pop culture musings for you guys every week. Mess would not be Mess without your precious insights and eternal patience with all my lil’ shenanigans. <3
Ok time to make you regret subscribing to this email!
Listen. I’m grateful that the frenetic coverage of these two seems to have subsided somewhat post Super Bowl. Although I fear that’s only because Taylor’s out of the country. But I swear, these stupid Easter eggs are going to be the death of me. What is the point. What has been accomplished by doing this. In my day, we just called this a PR stunt not a 4D chess move. It did get me thinking though, there’s no way this was Travis’s doing, right? A Swiftie stylist put this on him and he was like, great, cool shirt. I am not sold that this man happens to know the four colors of the album art for this Tortured Poets thing and then found this shirt that is, weirdly enough, composed of those exact same four colors. Oh god, I also just had a horrible flash of all of the lyrical close-reading and clue-hunting that awaits us next month when this thing finally comes out, especially with everyone looking for Joe Alwyn breakup hints. Anyway, as always, I’d like to be excluded from this deeply millennial Sherlock Holmes narrative.
Wow! Can you believe it! As I said on Notes earlier, it’s almost as if that was the plan all along! Like Bradley having a model date on his arm while he desperately tries to win an Oscar was the very reason they got together in the first place…Although, since I screenshot the headline above, Entertainment Tonight has already come out with their own contradictory report claiming that Gigi will NOT be going to the Oscars! Oh my!!! Instead, she “will be at home with her daughter." Hm. Sounds to me like something went majorly wrong with BradGi between that first and second report, but ok! Also, it kind of makes me wonder, have the Oscars fallen off? Because I feel like, at one point, being invited to attend was like the Super Bowl of being famous, ditto the Met Gala. But perhaps that’s not the case anymore? I would think this would be the crossover event of the century for a model, and yet!
I also recently saw a TikTok of the two of them doing one of their little paparazzi set-ups and it was sloppy work. Everyone’s getting way too flagrant with it. I expect more craft from an aspiring Academy Award winner. The pause outside the taxi, the long walk from the car to the restaurant, the window table where Gigi’s caresses and hair twirling is fully visible to the cameras outside. The lady doth protest too much, methinks! I’m not saying this is a fake relationship, but at the very least it is a highly, highly performative one. And, at this rate, Bradley is never going to beat those bearding charges.
This relationship, on the other hand, I love! I honestly see it! She’s more age appropriate for him, yet still a former professional model. She’s lived all over Europe and speaks fluent French. She was married to a count for forever so she’s used to all the hoity-toity rich people stuff that entails. I think this could really work……Now, we’ll know it’s true love when Page Six is blessed with the exclusive photographic evidence of Olivier sitting front row at one of her cabaret performances. Personally, I’m praying for a photo of him giving Lu a sideways head hug as he once did his poor ex-wife Mary-Kate at a basketball game. Because, unfortunately, Lu is far too tall to recreate one of my all-time favorite paparazzi images of Olivier walking with his daughter and his even more pint-size, chain-smoking bride. I wish this couple nothing but the best!
This shit, however, makes me feel insane. Despite my brave crusading against both these brands, it appears I’ve finally lost the great fashion war. The famous contingent has officially gone to the dark side. Both these designers who we should no longer have any dealings with have managed to claw their way to a complete comeback. I’ve been defeated! I blame the Kardashians on both counts for normalizing working with these losers again. The fashion industry remains the ultimate safe haven for bigots and predators who don’t even design good clothes to begin with. What exactly are we clinging to here???
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I started this rant over in Sloppy Seconds this week, focusing on Kylie Jenner and Rihanna’s recent desperado behavior regarding their finances, as though they are not both billionaires. But I saved Lady Gaga being a corporate sell-out weirdo to share with the rest of the class. For those who missed the TikToks, Gaga hosted a PR event at her Malibu mansion this week for the Australian sun protection pharmaceutical brand Clinuvel, during which she gave an enthusiastic Billy Mays-worthy infomercial on behalf of the company. The whole thing has big MLM presentation energy. Apparently she’s embarrassing herself in this way because her boyfriend is not only an early investor in Clinuvel, but also a trustee of the Photomedicine Foundation Clinuvel, an endeavor that the company launched at this event. All of which made me think again about that very cringe partnership she had with Pfizer last summer plugging migraine medication, and now I’m wondering if her bf wasn’t somehow financially involved in that product placement as well! Regardless, in both cases, very thirsty behavior from an extremely rich woman. A level of wealth hoarding I suggested in S-squared on Wednesday has got to be one of the hallmarks of the end times.
(Whenever I try to embed TikToks in this email I feel like it doesn’t work so here’s a link to the video of Lady Gaga giving a sales pitch.)
On a much brighter note, butt cleavage once again reigned supreme on the red carpet this week!!!! I do not know the musician CMAT, but suddenly I am in love her. This is everything. This is Mess. And I am particularly enamored with the way that she made sure to get her butt crack in frame every chance she got (as you can see in this clip) because if you’re going to go for a back this low cut, it’s the law that you have to flaunt it. I was actually so taken with my bumster prediction once again coming to fruition, that I didn’t even realize until going through these photos on Getty that CMAT is also participating in the double-wide shoulder movement! These poufs would block an exit very nicely!!!! And a Discord member pointed out that stupidly enormous shoulders are actually a fashion trend that even Anne of Green Gables was complaining about back in 1908 and I’m thrilled to be keeping that literary tradition alive here in these pages.
But someone who I did not expect to get in on the butt cleavage action, especially this early on in the trend cycle, was Katy Perry. But, lo and behold, the pop star got her intergluteal cleft out all in the name of Women in Music. The G-string kind of ruins it though. It feels like she’s unnecessarily underscoring the point that her crack is very much visible. It’s also funny because earlier this week after seeing CMAT above I was thinking, you know what this bumster revival needs — tramp stamps!!!! Or at least a rhinestone vajazzling situation, but for the rear. Then Highsnobiety came along and confirmed that tattoo style is in fact on the rise, and the next day Katy stepped out with this scarification butterfly. The faux body mod doesn’t add a lot to this outfit and speaks more to Katy’s need to make everything into a costume than the 2024 tramp stamp agenda, but I do want more celebs to start exploring the many possibilities of red carpet special effects makeup à la Rita Ora’s stegosaurus spikes, so I don’t want to totally knock it. Although, I will say this butterfly looks a little more embossed than scarred.
Julia Fox gave us yet another iteration of Emperor’s New Clothes dressing, mooning the masses at the Mugler show in this catsuit that looks like it was built out of a bunch of those fiber optic magic wands. Although, I wish this lit up like those do. She was also so close to pulling off something very cool here and then had to go and add this glitter face paint Rorschach test. It’s like manic pixie Insane Clown Posse. At least for once she solved her accessory problem by simply not having any.
And Justine Skye wore a great imitation McQueen bustier made by Justas Vonzodas x J Phoenix London to the Billboard Women in Music event. I personally think the nudity trend we’ve been seeing all 2023 is always way more fun when merged with trompe l’oeil stuff. Longtime readers also know I’ve been riding for dresses with a faux belly button piercing since Cardi attended the Schiaparelli couture show last summer. And combing that with these fake nipple charms only takes my obsession with this type of optical illusion to new heights.
I am not familiar with the drag queen Bimini, but I love the way she thinks. She attended the Brit Awards in a corset — the waist-annihilating look of the moment, as we discussed last week — featuring an explosion of tinsel coming out of the chest. Another creative way to draw the eye now that we’ve all been so thoroughly desensitized to an exposed areola, but also a smart form of self-defense. And as I told you the other week in regards to Kaia Gerber’s gold-plated porcupine dress, I love a garment that doubles as a weapon. Bimini also pulled a Julia Fox with this pubis dip of the skirt. She gets it. Although, I am ready for us to move on from opera gloves as a society.
Tracee Ellis Ross put my long-held belief regarding dress cutouts in weird places to the ultimate test this week, and I feel like it passed with flying colors! Are these random flashes of abdomen where you can barely comprehend what body part you’re looking at sexy? No. Not in the slightest. But they are kind of jarring in an uncanny valley type of way and that might be even more attention-grabbing. I also like that this dress looks like something you would find on a “no-sew DIY projects” Pinterest board, like it’s made out of those long fabric donuts you’d find in an aerial yoga studio. But my favorite thing about this dress is that someone commented on the Daily Mail article about it “your mother would never wear this.” You mean, Diana????? Diana Ross?! Are you sure we’re talking about the same woman because add some sequins and a ruffled tulle cape coat and I’m pretty sure she would wear this right now.
Speaking of surprising ways to flash flesh, I love that we’re moving from a year of visible lingerie into straight up sexy gymnastics apparel. Swimwear is the new formalwear now, and don’t say I didn’t warn you when someone walks down the red carpet in a black-tie bikini. But I actually think Kristen Stewart looks great here. This is an extremely her outfit and the sheers, heels, and blazer do manage to make this high-end Aritzia bodysuit look more formal. Although, I would love to see a couple of shots without the jacket slumped off her shoulders. I also don’t totally understand this particular choice in hosiery. I feel like her stylist could’ve easily bought tights that are sheer all the way to the waistband because not only is there this control panel top, but you can also see the black crotch of the tights sticking out of the onesie, both of which mess with the lines of the outfit.
I also wanted to bring up this look because I was struck this week by the very different manner in which the internet is speaking about this ensemble versus when Bianca Censori wore an almost identical look by Mowalola to the Super Bowl just minus the tights. I get that people have a whole lot more good will towards one of these women than the other, but it’s very strange to me to act like this outfit is positively pornographic on one of them while the other is supposedly the height of fashion. Sure, Bianca’s could’ve been tailored much better to her body, but other than that the only real difference I can see between these two outfits is that one wearer has tits and ass and the other does not. Just interesting! The ever-moving goal post of what constitutes “slutty” attire will never cease to intrigue me!
In other slutty attire innovations, my fav, deeply alarming runway show, The Black Tape Project, lives on via Talia Storm’s catsuit made of vinyl mini blinds. This flesh-tone spandex might be the color match of the century, but the seams running up the leg sadly gave away the optical illusion happening here. However, I do genuinely feel like we’re going to see someone recreate this look minus the modesty panels in the very near future. Electrical tape stock is about to go through the roof!
And finally, for the past couple of weeks, paid subs have been treated to a special feature in every email shouting out the new famous furries joining the ranks of out and proud celebrity fursonas. A bit that has quickly devolved from a joke to a haunting matter of fact. But I don’t think any of those revelations have shocked me quite so much as Iris Law just fully admitting to aspiring to be a possessor of paws on main. When will the mascot madness end!
And on that deeply eerie note, I’ve gotta make like Jessica Simpson and motor!
Miss u already, but hopefully I’ll see a bunch of new Messketeers back here on Tuesday to talk all things Oscars. Otherwise I’ll catch ya next Friday to dissect even more troublesome togs.
Stay true!
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See you later, my discerning arbiters of bad taste!
"It’s like manic pixie Insane Clown Posse." 🤌
I need 1000 words on Trishelle as the epitome of white women weaponization!!!