Greetings, Messketeers!
As I sat down to write this today, I realized that it’s been exactly four years since I started this damn thing so: Happy four-year anniversary of I <3 Mess everyone!!! As a teeny, tiny handful of you know, I started out this newsletter speaking to roughly 30 people every Friday for a solid year before anyone outside of my immediate family caught on to what I was getting up to in this newsletter. And yet, she persisted!!!! Mostly because I truly had nothing better to do as I had freshly quit my job at the New York Post with big plans of going freelance only to wind up on my sister’s couch during a global pandemic after every outlet I’d ever worked for axed their freelancer budget entirely. So without a Slack to dump all of my random pop culture thoughts into, and in the hopes of sparing my friends from a relentless barrage of paparazzi pics they don’t care about, I started compiling them here along with my silly, little thoughts, and thus Mess was born. It’s insane what all of this has grown into since then. It’s honestly a number I actively try not to think about while writing you these fevered diatribes lest I clam up entirely. But it’s especially wild considering I sit down to write this every week with the great fear in my heart that I will have to report to you all that I’ve run out of opinions entirely. That there is simply no more Mess to be had out there on the streets of Hollywood and it’s time for me to pack up my bindle and disappear into the corn stalks Field of Dreams style, like this was all just some beautiful, demented nightmare. And yet, over the last four years, I’ve continued to find all-new content to horrify you with and, if anything, I’ve only gotten more verbose, more provocative, and more insistent upon the veracity of my various trend reports and conspiracy theories to the point that they’ve now evolved into a network of red string chaos that puts Pepe Silvia to shame. This has grown from a last-ditch effort to keep myself sane to a full-blown viable career path and I am eternally grateful for that. Thank you all so much for making Mess what it is today. Any success I’ve had is entirely due to all of you, your fanaticism, and your generous word of mouth recommendations as no legit fashion publication will touch this thing with a ten-foot pole. I feel blessed to be a Messketeer today and every day <3
Now all of that said, today’s edition is going to be a bit on the shorter side as I accidentally went HAM in Sloppy Seconds this week and didn’t realize what a premium experience I was delivering. Mea culpa. I had some Oscars trend business to wrap up, some spon-con praise to heap upon Vanessa Hudgens, some Kim K outfit bashing to get to, and my utter exhaustion with two rising male stars to expound upon. Which, by the way, I just need to provide one more crucial piece of context regarding that dynamic duo that I failed to bring up in the original email which is: That photo was taken backstage at a JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE CONCERT. Enough said. And, as I informed those readers on Wednesday, there’s been some rumblings on Discord about me making a few more product recommendations after my endorsement of the Sam Edelman mary janes last week. To sate this desire to shop, I’m going to start sending out a once a month email filled with things I bought and/or enjoyed recently, which should be hitting inboxes ~two weeks from now. So whether you’re looking for a twice weekly helping of really ugly celebrity fashion or you’d like Mess to start influencing your personal shopping cart as well, make sure to sign up for all of that.
And finally, I need to announce that after I issued a request last week for someone to come up with a turn of phrase for wearing double corduroy akin to double denim’s Canadian tuxedo, I received ZERO replies. So I turned to my friend Madison, whose mind is truly built for these types of inane, yet crucial questions, and he came up with an answer so quickly it left my head spinning. Before I tell you the perfect bon mot he came up with, some insight into the twisted logic that brought him to this place: A lot of people thing the word “corduroy” comes from the French phrase corde du roi or the cord of the king (it doesn’t, but that’s irrelevant for our purposes here today). So if this fabric is the king’s cord, it makes sense that a whole outfit made out of it would also belong to this monarch somehow. So we began musing, is it the king’s tuxedo? Doesn’t seem nearly fancy enough for a royal. And that’s when we realized, it’s the King’s pajamas. Get into it, folks!!!!
Now, with that settled, I think it’s time for the main attraction.
One of the most important things I shared with paid subscribers this week is my profound obsession with Jojo Siwa’s “adult” pop star rebrand and how horribly awry it’s all going. I already chatted their ears off about it, so I won’t get too into the weeds again today, but this image came out immediately after I sent that email and I just had to return to this topic once more to express my delight at the terrible “Toxic” homage Jojo’s doing here in a catsuit that I know she thinks is risqué, but is actually extremely Dance Moms. Also, the fact that this autotuned-to-hell Kidz Bop single “Karma” is about her being a “bad girl” and breaking all these hearts and yet here she is gazing not at one of those lovely ladies, but into her own eyes like Narcissus in the pond — profound! If you haven’t caught any of the MANY TikToks she’s posted about her practicing the choreography for this music video, I need you to sprint on over to that platform immediately. Abby Lee’s services have never been more desperately needed. And the fact that every single TikTok user is attempting to tell her they hate this and it’s bad and she’s taking absolutely zero feedback makes everything transpiring here all the more beautiful (to me, at least).
Anyway, in regards to my other favorite former reality stars, the Kardashians continue to churn out their various products at a truly alarming clip.1 This week, that pursuit to bleed our wallets dry involved venturing to their local Target franchise to celebrate the launch of Kourtney’s Lemme supplements at the superstore and I just wanted to say that this is such a great and normal outfit for a Target run. I am not stressed at all about how dirty this silk coat is getting while being dragged around those aisles. Obviously, a Kardashian is always going to be doing too much fashion-wise, especially while shopping at a big-box store, but I primarily wanted to share this image as I was once again struck by how weirdly frozen in time Khloé’s sense of style is and how little her sisters are doing to help her out of this time warp. Because this Easter-ready duster and ruched dress combo came straight out of 2015. She is eternally trapped in her Monica Rose era despite their infamous falling out and I find it fascinating that no new trends seem to be able to infiltrate this woman’s Pinterest boards. Can no sibling lend her an old stylist or two? At the very least, let Kanye do one last wardrobe overhaul for old time’s sake!
It also struck me this week that the members of this family are no longer really siblings who have normal familial interactions, but rather a collection of multi-million-dollar corporations turning every exchange into a new opportunity for brand synergy. Because is this cross-promotional moment fun? Is it even very clever??? Kim could have simply placed a bottle of Lemme in her private jet, posted a pic, and called it a day. But instead, she completely redesigned the packaging to be cohesive with the rest of her monastic interiors and her personal brand that was invented for her by her ex-husband a decade ago and hasn’t been updated since, and then pretended as though this is all some weird collab between her $150 million personal aircraft and her sister’s supplement business. And don’t even get me started on the fact that the “KIM AIR” branding is just a poor man’s Off-White dupe. (In Sloppy Seconds this week I also speculated that her aggressive usage of KIM AIR might be one of the many large, unnecessary expenses quietly bankrupting Kim and keeping her in such a desperate financial mindset.) This is truly some late capitalism brain worm behavior because how is anything going on here a flex? Who is this meant to impress? It’s 2024. Thanks to Instagram, we all have personal brands now, and we all have access to print-on-demand services. Monogramming things is not quite the savvy “get up off your ass and work” business move Kim thinks it is. This is the work of an idle rich person who has run out of ideas for what to do with their wealth. Thankfully, I’m always right here whenever Kim wants to reach out, ready to make some extravagantly disgusting suggestions for how she can spend those billions.
In Kardashian adjacent news, I just wanted to quickly touch upon how much I appreciate the artisanal Facetune work happening here, specifically to the generic white woman in the center formally known as Kathy Hilton. They have airbrushed this 65-year-old into Snapchat baby filter anonymity and I think that’s fabulous. I feel like famous people could be doing a lot less work in the plastic surgeon’s office and a lot more photoshop work in the apps. I prefer when a celeb’s social media appearance is completely divorced from how they look IRL. At the very least, it reinvigorates banal content like this and elevates into something I don’t just want to look at, but study on an academic level. Kris Jenner is another aging star very guilty of this online behavior. I’m actually not entirely sure why she employs a makeup artist to begin with when the majority of the face painting is being done in post, but I’m loving it regardless!
I also wanted to express my appreciation for Addison Rae who is out here really putting in the work. She’s not basing her aughts revival fashions of what her Gen Z peers say is trendy, she’s actually diving headfirst into the primary texts. She is plumbing the depths of the Tumblr archives and analyizing the scans of twenty-year-old UsWeeklys and it shows!!! She is the rightful heir to Cory Kennedy’s It-girl throne, a student of Mark the Cobrasnake, an American Apparel model if I ever saw one. This pink McQueen skull scarf is so specific and authentic to the pre-teen aughts experience, I am shocked I haven’t seen it make a comeback before now. Everyone had one of these — Nicole Richie, specifically — and I wanted one desperately. Also the fact that she set this whole Trevi Fountain Instagram post to Hillary Duff’s “What Dreams Are Made Of”…..chef’s kiss! Give this woman every back issue of Teen Vogue and dELiA*s you’ve got!!!!!
And apparently I’m just in the ultimate generous mood today because I even have something nice to say about an outfit Sydney Sweeney wore! I don’t hate it and it’s Balmain, so you know I really want to! I think it’s just so nice to not have her boobs be the focal point of an outfit for once and for everything to actually fit. This look also adds more fuel to our 2024 sculptural dressing trend. With the scandal of total nudity now obliterated, things are becoming increasingly Grecian bust-inspired out there. While I like the idea, I don’t love the disembodied mannequin hands, but I think that has more to do with my automatonophobia and the fact that they strongly remind me of MGK’s stupid mic stand than the actual design itself. But I think the real reason everyone’s going so crazy for this outfit is that these pants are superb. They fit so, so nicely. This is literally all I’ve ever wanted from a trouser and have never been able to achieve. I also like seeing some different hairstyles on Syd than the same long, loose babygirl waves, but this particular wet tendril will never not be synonymous with Crybaby in my mind.2
If last year was all about lingerie becoming outerwear, than it feels like this year is firmly headed in the direction of making swimwear into formalwear. I first warned you of the potential of this styling movement when Kristen Stewart arrived on the red carpet to promote her new film wearing little more than a Speedo one-piece. And now, here we have eternal Mess trailblazer and The Black Tape Project super fan, Cardi B, wearing what to my mind is a neoprene bikini and the ruched Fashion Nova swim cover-up that goes with it. This is exactly what I imagine people wear to those weird swimming pool daytime clubs in Las Vegas — a venue I only know exists because I watched the entirety of Double Shot at Love. Anyway, as with all of my trend forecasting, I was mostly joking before about us seeing black-tie bikinis before the year is out, but now it’s looking more and more likely that we’re about to be deluged with looks that bear a striking resemblance to the one Lady Gaga wore while inch-worming her way up the Met Gala steps.
I’m not familiar with the actress Celeste O’Connor, but I am quite enchanted with the concept she’s introduced here of bumper lane attire. I think we could and should be building much more personal padding into all sorts of garments. A look that could be especially helpful for those ladies who have already gotten their ass implants dissolved as we plunge deeper into the year of butt cleavage, and a very convenient way to pull a George Michael Bluth and score that six-pack without ever setting foot in the gym. It also gives a more modern update to the pannier trend we were seeing a lot of in 2022, a gentler way to exponentially widen the hips that also works beautifully in tandem with this year’s linebacker shoulder aesthetic. And what could be more in line with 2024’s sculptural fashion trend than turning the body into a bouncy castle? If all of that wasn’t enough look for you to parse, Celeste also added a single crystal hair strand into the mix. I love the creativity, but let’s do it with some mega-carat diamonds next time!
And I leave you today with the knowledge that Kristen Stewart and her bride-to-be have the opportunity to do the funniest thing possible……3
Ok, well, sorry I have to cut it short, but thanks for taking a closer look at these questionable finds with me.
I love you all as much as Salma Hayek loves this random tree.
But I’ve got some serious business to attend to….
So, stay strong until we meet again, my compatriots in clothing chaos! Adieu!
I’ve got an anniversary gift to go buy myself!:
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Sayonara, my savvy shoppers!!
I do not consider the programming they currently put out to be “reality.”
One of my all-time fav movies growing up. If you haven’t seen it, suspend your disgust with Johnny Depp for a moment to witness Traci Lords and Hatchet-Face’s absolute star turns in this film.
That wedding is also genuinely very beautiful! It took me until I was 32 to finally watch it, but I love the insanity that is Twilight so, so much and am ready to do a Mess group rewatch of the entire franchise at any time. Just say the word!
Happy four years!!!
Happy Messversary to one and all!