Goop is my landlord

Zendaya for Smart Water

Howdy, buckaroos!

I’ve had a shockingly jam-packed week full of activities. Well, for someone who typically does almost nothing outside of fart around on the interweb.

• I went out to dinner and a punk show with friends, and it was actually good! I’m even thinking about going back to the same venue for another show this weekend.

• I went to the dentist — a waking nightmare that only seems to worsen with age. I’ve just finally accepted it as a harsh reality that I have to completely disassociate from and power through with the help of an episode of 90 Day Fiancé that barely drowns out the sound of metal scraping against enamel.

• I took Fran to the groomers and she now looks like a scrawny, googly-eyed little rat dog again instead of Fozzie Bear.

• Her groomer also happens to be near Win Son Bakery, so I got to experience what was easily the best breakfast sandwich and donut of my life as a reward for all my efforts.

• And finally, I had my first ever EMDR therapy session after roughly a year of threatening to sign up for one.

A big week for begrudgingly adult behaviors, I gotta say.

Anyway, outside of my eternal struggle to simply act my age, I got a lovely shoutout from my podcasting favs Who? Weekly on their Monday episode as it turns out they are as baffled as I am that I was able to secure a quote from thee Taylor Swift for my Suki Waterhouse profile in SSENSE. Unfortunately, I have no further insight to offer them as to why Tree Paine arbitrarily bestowed this beneficent favor upon me, but there is nothing I love more than my full government name being said aloud before tens of thousands of strangers, so my sincerest gratitude for that.

Also, a million years ago, I filmed an interview to be a talking head in a documentary about Kim and Kanye’s divorce and that is now finally out on Max and you can stream it if you want??? My voice is in the trailer which is already extremely weird to me, but even more strange is that my cousin immediately DM’d me to say she saw me in it and I did a good job. I have a blanket rule against watching or listening to myself do anything as a form of self protection so, unfortunately, I will never know if my cousin’s assessment of my performance is accurate or not. But if you do end up watching it, please let me know what you think! I have zero recollection of anything I said!!!

Ok, that’s about all I’ve got to share with you at the moment, but if you need to holler at me for whatever reason, you can always slither your way into the Discord and do so.

Now, time for some goofs and gaffes.

In regards to today’s sub-hed, I really have no explanation for myself. My smooth brain has simply latched onto this tweet and will not let go. All these Pop accounts (Crave, Base, etc.) have really been cracking me up lately with their daily barrage of tweets that put in just the bare minimum amount of effort to coherently deliver “news.” I think it’s also that everything going on in this image is working overtime at top tier levels of glamour to sell me a very mid bottle of tap water. Plus, “Zendaya for Smart Water” just has big “Zendaya is MeeChee” energy, a moment that left an impact on pop culture we still haven’t fully grappled with.

And when I tell you that this image has singlehandedly buoyed my spirits and carried me through this week like I was floating upon a cloud. Stunning. Paparazzi high art. The cantaloupes held like they’re being weighed upon the scales of justice that are the mitts of this giant man. I’m not joking, I want to know everything there is to know about this bodyguard. The internet is telling me that Kevin Costner is 6’1” which only makes the proportions of this courrier of cantaloupes all the more wild. Mystery farmer’s market ferrier, please step forward.

This headline made me realize that this is exactly the type of “addiction” every star in Hollywood should cultivate. Instead of the diamonds and mega mansions and fleets of undriveable luxury vehicles, stars need to develop incredibly niche and eccentric hobbies in an attempt to fill the void in their heart and soak up all of their disposable income. This also immediately reminded me of Rod Stewart and his — genuinely incredible — room dedicated exclusively to model trains. Someone please notify Kim and Drake that this is how you do collecting in a non horcrux-y type of way.

Martha Stewart is just so unbelievably good at social media. Not only did she post a photo of herself where she looks lit from within in a way someone who just made a deal with the devil would look lit from within, but she then screenshot someone’s photoshop of that image, cropped it just enough so the creator won’t get any credit for it, and then wrote on top of it in Comic Sans, “Would be a nice fabric !!” And you know what? She’s not wrong! I understand Martha already runs a home goods empire, but I need her to get a dumb meme-based merch line akin to what Guy Fieri is currently operating ASAP. You already know her adoring public (me) would wear the hell out of a tee with her poolside thirst trap printed on it. Better yet, her mugshot?!!!

Megan Fox announced this week that she is releasing a book of poems to “excise the illness that has taken root” in her due to “keeping the secrets of men” and I’ve never been more excited for a publication. Print is back, baby! I might have to buy this book and go through it page by page for paid subscribers because I’m ready to be the Harold Bloom to the Ulysses that is Pretty Boys Are Poisonous. At the same time, whenever celebs publish books like this that they seem to have written in a matter of months, it does make me question my entire profession and if I too should just shit out a half-assed tome for the clout. At the very least, someone please let me ghost write Megan’s next young adult fiction novel about a witch who falls in love with a gothic elfin sprite that’s really a thinly veiled retelling of her and MGK’s love story, I beg.

I suppose we should talk about Kim Kardashian for Marc Jacobs which was……fine? I guess. I just don’t get the point of this casting. I mean, I do. The point is money. A lot of it. But creatively, I just find it all to be so mind-numbingly repetitive. Marc Jacobs is usually pretty on point in its deployment of celebrity, and also, traditionally, remarkably good at transforming those famous people into someone a little less recognizable and a little more Marc. And that’s also what typically makes these types of collabs cool……so why does Kim still look exactly like she always does. Lack of the semblance of a makeover aside, I think Kim is a very logical choice for Marc, especially considering his legacy of shoving a “trashy” celeb into the high fashion arena, as he did with Victoria Beckham when she was still at peak chav. Honestly, he would’ve been better off hiding Kim in a giant shopping bag too.

On top of this woman simply starring in way too many luxury campaigns over the last two years, I think what all of these fashion labels are failing to recognize about working with Kim is that while obviously they get to leverage her immense global audience and selling power to their advantage, what they lose in the process is their own unique brand identity. As I’ve told you before, thanks to Kim, Balenciaga is Fendi is Dolce is Skims. And Marc is now next in line. Kim may be a PR juggernaut, but she is also a black hole, absorbing these label’s aesthetic codes and making them synonymous with herself, voiding them out entirely into just a handful of aesthetic codes set to be instantaneously devoured and devalued by fast fashion brands, including her own.

Anyway, Kim also got a lot of grief this week for plugging this $2500 full-body health scan machine. But personally, I love this new venture into niche medical device promotion while the rest of America struggles to access extremely basic healthcare. That is some true 1% behavior!!! Now that the KarJenners have ravaged every beauty and fashion brand’s promotional budget for all they’re worth, why not pivot to the folks who actually have billions to blow on a single Instagram post. Show me the Lockheed Martin press trip aboard a tactical aircraft. Where is the Shein-style visit to some oil fields sponsored by Exxon. This family has always been capitalist maximalists, so why not demonstrate the all-new echelons of sell-out now possible for a celebrity to attain?

And unrelated, but I just want to know why no one is talking about how Khloé made some people wear slip covers on their shoes during her son’s first birthday party, while others didn’t have to…and if you think you’ve discovered some rhyme or reason as to who was forced to wear these shoe caps, please go scroll through this endless Instagram carousel and think again.

Anyway, as for our weekly check-in on the woman whose entire existence Kim should be directly plagiarizing, Aubrey O’Day demonstrated yet again why she’s the best photoshopper in the biz in a dress that can truly only exist in her world of digitized optical illusions. Just remember: “everything is on purpose to assist your soul’s evolution…”

A Messketeer tagged me in this photo of Japanese Breakfast in a custom Sandy Liang fit and 1. I love when you guys tag me in stuff. And 2. this is a very fun way to do pubis-centric fashion we haven’t seen yet. As I mentioned last week, there’s no need to totally reinvent the wheel when it comes to flesh-baring fashion, all it really takes is a novel angle on the same old cutouts to make things feel a little thrilling again. I think Liang has achieved that here not only by extending the hip cutouts down the front of the thigh, but also cinching it with these bows, which add the threat that this whole outfit could be totally undone with the pull of a string. And as you should all know by now from reading this newsletter, nothing is sexier than the threat of accidental sexiness!

And I just wanted to include this photo of Gisele in Louis Vuitton to provide yet another example of a built off the body garment like that Loewe dress we saw on Jennifer Lawrence and Taylor Russell. I still think there’s something very modern to this paper doll silhouette that’s worth exploring further. Also, this divorce has truly been the best thing to ever happen to Gisele and Vogue covers worldwide

I have a micro trend sighting for you straight from the main stage of Lollapalooza. It seems there’s something percolating out there amongst the pop stars in terms of sheer bras layered beneath some sort of gaping, ruffled chest cutout in yet another sheer garment. I guess Megan Fox was really onto something with that open heart surgery dress the other week. An exceedingly rare W for Maeve.

But I also noticed in general this week, that the next frontier of extremely sheer celebrity apparel seems to be all about layering your various transparent garments atop one another. Like Lily Allen, who is apparently in a play right now but the only reason I know that is because she has turned the theater’s stage door into her own personal nightly runway show for the paparazzi. And for one such stroll, she chose this metal mesh Chloé dress layered atop a sheer sports bra, sheer bike shorts and a thong. I think there’s way too much going on here in terms of various straps and semi-exposed swaths of flesh, but I can appreciate the sentiment. Similar to the Japanese Breakfast matching set, there’s an alluring peekaboo sensibility happening here that provides the guise of being covered up while actually leaving absolutely everything exposed.

And when such pieces are not being layered, it seems the look is just getting smaller and tighter. Instead of flowy, diaphanous maxi skirts, we’re now seeing see-through micro minis courtesy of Doja Cat. The same woman who also pushed sheer pants into the limelight with her very poorly timed Victoria’s Secret ad, the likes of which we’re now also seeing on Summer Walker, the singer who blazed a gilded pasties trail for the rest of Hollywood last year at the BET Awards.

Amelia Gray raises the incredibly important question, why hasn’t Prada ever given us a true cowboy hat? It’s time to officially bring Prada Marfa into the brand fold.

And I was already busy thinking about what a corny Instagram THOT Drake is posting paparazzi pics of himself in a very boring, normal tracksuit to his own Stories, when the eternally wise Hunter Harris came along and perfectly put into words my vague sentiments. We’ve always known Bartise is this man, but now this man has officially become Bartise.

Tom Brady, aka the Joker, and his kids.

In other news about men I can’t stand, tell me this is not the face of a super villain. Does this even constitute as smiling?

In happier news, devoted Messketeers already know that I’m obsessed with Rod Stewart, but now I am equally obsessed with his latest choice in jam-cessory. I am actively being influenced. Jam is the new iced Matcha. Jam is the new iPhone. Jam is my Birkin. I feel that we’ve reached the stage in late capitalism where “wealth” and “luxury” no matter mean anything amongst the A-list and thus the real flex is going to entail pivoting to behavior that feels rich, yet is actually quotidian. Enter carrying around a jar of fancy jam. The more impractical the object, the more impactful as arbitrary status symbol. Get this man a Bonne Maman deal yesterday.

And finally, I just have to once again commend Sam Smith on their absolute pitch perfect understanding of skirt proportions and how to wear one in the least try-hard way. Brad Pitt, take note.

Ok, well now that I’ve shoved my opinions down your throat for the last 20 minutes like Cameron Diaz wedging herself through a set of automatic doors…

…I suppose it’s time for me to make like Eric André.

Peace out, pals!

Do you hear what I hear? That’s right, it’s the death knell sounding for yet another Friday edition of Mess. Despite my various attempts to undermine your authority and bore you to tears, you’ve once again waded through this bog of cataclysmic clothing to find yourself at the tail end of this email. And if your iron stomach for petty gossip runs in the family, then please sign up your next of kin for a free subscription today, and then stock up on some pepto before indulging in a paid subscription for yourself. Should you seek to gorge on sartorial tragedies without forking over any cash, go on and join the ~MESS DISCORD~ where 650 fellow Messketeers would be happy to serve you fug until you pop. And please don’t forget to stock up on some Mess Merch as well.

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Here’s looking at you, kids!

Oo, the flossy, flossy.