Jennifer Aniston's 30-year-old toe ring
A gluttonous pre-Thanksgiving deep dive.
Hello, my precious Messketeers!
How has November been treating you so far? What scrumptious sweets and savories are we cooking up for our Thanksgiving repasts? I’m hopefully headed up to Maine next week to freeze my butt off while I gorge on mashed potatoes. That is, if Fran starts feeling better as she’s spent the past week with a gnarly little stomach bug that has been stressing me the hell out. I have now developed a sixth sense to be able to hear if she’s lapping up water or puking from anywhere in the apartment even if I am in the deepest sleep of my life as I was this morning when the sound of her merely entering my room caused me to fully rise from the dead Crypt Keeper style.
Needless to say, this has been the major preoccupation of my life at the moment, so my week was otherwise pretty uneventful, and perhaps because of that fact it was also shockingly productive. Please know that I tried desperately to write up an All’s Fair fashion recap for paid subs and simply was not strong enough to make it through a single episode. I watched about 20 minutes before I started thinking, you know……this doesn’t seem to actually have much grist for my Mess mill. There’s really not much to say about a bunch of primary-colored power suits and dialogue that includes such insightful one-liners as, “Come on, gloves!” I then made it about another 15 minutes in before I had to turn it off entirely as I distinctly felt my brain atrophying inside my skull and not even in a fun Secret Lives of Mormon Wives kind of way. I’m so sorry I failed you on this cursed mission. I will say that the one singular part I enjoyed was when Ryan Murphy apropos of nothing gave Kim K the full early aughts music video treatment, showing us every conceivable angle of her driving her real life Bentley convertible with her real life Birkin sitting in the passenger seat beside her. And it got me thinking, does Kim know she could just be a video vixen?? She really does not need to change her Botox appointments from weekly to bi-weekly in order to subject us all to her “acting,” she could just traipse around looking fabulous in other musicians’ artistic visions.
When not using AI-generated television programming to self-flagellate, I went on two podcasts this week that hopefully you’ll get to hear in the very near future. The first is Slate’s ICYMI which should be coming out next Saturday I believe, so keep an eye out for that! I also got an incredible amount of work done on my pitch for 831 Stories. Have I already told you guys about this? Basically, I just feel, as the ultimate consumer of rom-com drivel, that I know this medium in a way that makes me the prime candidate to subvert it in a fun and sexy way, and so I am trying my best to do just that in novella form as that is also a word count that doesn’t immediately send me spiraling. I have never written fiction before, but I genuinely think I have a great idea that totally fits their format, so I’m going to give it the old college try. If anyone knows someone there, please let me know!
And finally, I have a very belated new YouTube video for you all rounding up the fashions of October that will be coming out on Sunday.
Next week, Mess will be off for Thanksgiving. But I will be having a live chat with paid subs on Monday eve to discuss whatever we damn well please, and I just might have a new Mess World podcast episode ready for you all in time for ultimate post-holiday bed rotting indulgence Also! I pitched a great trend story to the New York Times this week, so when they inevitably reject it I will have a fabulous essay ready for paid subs all about The Hyperreal Body.
Ok, my prissy little pilgrims, let’s indulge!
For starters, maybe this is just a lingering feeling of gourd goodwill I have towards her after bravely being the sole celeb to post pumpkin patch photos last month, but I wanted to point out this headline to say that this is exactly the kind of diva antics I love and I long for. I absolutely want all of my famous people to make “staff” announce their arrival before entering any room, especially when there are only two people in said room, as was the case here. If anything, Meghan needs to wildly ratchet up the primadonna antics. Stop selling me knockoff Bonne Maman jam, and start wearing royal jewels to the grocery store while being fanned with palm leaves by the CEOs of Netflix and Spotify.
Pump It Up
Now, this is going to sound incredibly vague and that’s because it is. But as you know, the things that I relay to you in this email every week are always my most abstract notions culled from my half-baked musings that we then watch become honed by the red carpet into a razor-sharp trend before our very eyes. So, I’m going to need you to trust in me when I say that I’m having a gut feeling about VOLUME and PROPORTION. Yes, I know it has already been a year of big, geometric shapes out there and, yes, I think we will continue to see even more of that. But beyond the structure, beyond the dimension, it feels like there’s something going on here in regards to pumped up scale that I don’t quite have the language to articulate yet, but I’m noticing simmering around the edges of the zeitgeist.
Lauren Daigle’s Victoria Beckham dress at the CMA Awards feels like a cross between that Alix Earle Saint Laurent mini I highlighted the other week, Natasha Lyonne’s Schiaparelli gown at the 2024 Golden Globes, and Mickey Mouse’s ears. It’s black tie for Disney adults. All in all nothing new, but something about the size of those boob flaps feels conspicuous to me.
Michelle Yeoh’s custom Givenchy is extremely Rihanna’s Giambattista Valli at the 2015 Grammy Awards and I’m not mad at it. The robust feather duster silhouette is something I believe all red carpets could use a lot more of.
But most notable of all this week was Chase Infiniti in this tulle-tastic Louis Vuitton number. Yes, another dress with another weird structural shape from the brand that’s been pioneering that look all 2025. But the reason I love this one in particular so much is that it makes the wearer look like a Silkie chicken wearing the SATC opening credits dress.
Something Jenny McCarthy This Way Comes…
I saw this right before I hit send on last Friday’s email and was saddened that I couldn’t include it because this whole look conjured up exactly one word in my brain and that word was “pain,” pure and simple. I understand they were going for a 90s grunge thing here, but this glam couldn’t have flopped any harder. I think the Fall 1995 Versace gown is extremely solid and actually fits Sydney very nicely for once, especially for something that’s vintage and they probably couldn’t alter. But what I don’t understand is why it was not styled in any capacity. I honestly would’ve even taken a flannel tied haphazardly around the waist here, and adding a choker is not styling. Especially when that choker is not even on her neck straight. You had one job to do, etc., etc.
I’ve also never seen such a testament to the immense power of blush to make someone look alive. I will absolutely never understand this woman’s bob or any of the many terrible ways it’s been styled since she cut it, so I’ve decided to just protect my peace by living my life as though it does not exist. And while the black tightlining has managed to make her eyeballs look impossibly small, I have to say, between that and this crunchy-as-hell hair, Syd has never looked more like her authentically MAGA self. There’s something very Jenny McCarthy meets Nancy Grace happening here.
Highway to the Danger Zone
One other note I had to pass along from the GQ Men of the Year party is the V-neck waistline on Amelia Gray’s Tom Ford dress which feels like yet another nudity stroke of genius from the brand and the type of FUPA-forward detailing I’ve been waiting for. This subtle dip below the belt feels like a way to do Bianca Censori lite without frightening the general public. It reminds me of the Julia Fox 2022 centaur pants minus the razor burn (complimentary). My one complaint is, of course, the choice to block this sheer bikini zone panel with a black brief as, once again, this was literally the perfect moment to deploy one of those Skims merkins and it has been squandered. Why does Kim hate smart product placement?
2015 Trouser Throwback
This, to me, is a classically bad celebrity outfit. A Rita Ora street style signature. A look so unfortunate, yet so rife in Hollywood, I typically wouldn’t even bother to include it in these pages. But I had to do it this week as something about these Nensi Dojaka pants makes me feel very nostalgic. They take me right back to my early days of blogging at People circa 2015 when it felt like every day Kendall, Gigi, and Bella were assaulting our eyeballs with some newfangled vague notion of a dungaree. The mere concept of a pant. I’m thinking specifically of that time Kendall wore a pair of daisy dukes that had only the exterior seam of the pant still in tact, going all the way down her leg until it connected to just a circlet of denim around her ankle. Those were the days! We didn’t know how Mess we had it!!! Anyway, this demi-jort with an attached wide-leg, thigh-high stocking really channels that same energy, so I thought I would share it so we could all reminisce for a moment.
Colonel Doughnut
Remember the other week when I told you something funky is going on with shoulders out there? Well, something funky is going on with shoulders out there. I love that we are now ditching all preconceived notions of what a human torso should look like and getting fully tumescent with it. Who needs a shoulder pad when you can have a shoulder speed bump instead. These scapula donuts also make me want to get two identical little hats to go with all of the hats I own so that I can always have a matching set for my epaulettes, like clavicular bookends to my noggin.
Blinded by the Light
And while it’s true that Kim K has continued to follow my advice and wear very large, face-obscuring shades the past couple of weeks, I should’ve known Addison would already be one step ahead, going full Bird Box with it and leaving the airport blindfolded. I love a good game of arrivals gate Marco Polo. My only complaint is that she was not in fact actually blindfolded, despite TMZ’s headline, as this is clearly a lace mask she could fully see through. Next time, I’m going to need more of a Daredevil situation, but a fantastic paparazzi gimmick nonetheless. I’m looking forward to having an Eyes Wide Shut winter.
Memento Vivere
And I leave you here today with something that I both love and hate with all of my being, and that is Cardi B’s gold-plated umbilical cord heart. It is equal parts sweet and disturbing, cheap and garishly opulent, thoughtful and wildly TMI. I am really torn on this guy. Because on the one hand, I have never wanted to know that this is an option of something that could be done with an umbilical cord. I also think the actual fabrication process, which involves putting a wire into the cord and bending it into the shape of a heart shape before dipping it in $50 of gold plating sounds like an Etsy DIY project run amok. But on the other, am I not eternally begging famous people to do absurd, gratuitous things with their wealth? And is this not exactly that?! There’s also something a little memento mori to this concept, or memento vivere I suppose, and if anyone knew how to do unhinged morbid luxury correctly it was absolutely the Victorians. Now I would love to see Cardi take this even further, bling out her umbilical cord to the max, and turn it into a gorgeous bangle.
Alas. The end of this email has come about as naturally and easily as Josh Brolin blowing a kiss to his fans. Parting is such sweet sorrow, my friends, but I’ll see paid subs back here on Monday for an exclusive chit-chat and I’ll see the rest of you again in December. Goodnight, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England!
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Chase Infiniti is the name of a person, not a credit card?!?
Jordon’s huge ponytail kills me, what secrets does it hold?