Nastyyyy, with a Pucci outfit?
Need to be in that toxic Hollywood mom group chat.
Well, we’re back, my friends. And what an absolute nightmare week/month/year(s) it’s been.
The videos of the ICE raids and murders this week have been beyond devastating, as though everything else going on right now wasn’t already devastating enough. I genuinely can’t open social media or look at the news without being immediately reduced to tears and feeling the hum of panic and terror building in my body. I want to scream in rage and sob in helplessness over what’s happening. It feels like everything is accelerating into unmasked fascism faster than we can even identify it for what it is. That saying hell is empty and all the devils are here honestly feels like too gentle of a sentiment for America right now. This most recent public assassination of Renee Good has me thinking again about Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Sandra Bland, and all the other thousands of people murdered by the police in this country whose deaths were not taken as clear evidence of what these organizations’ real intentions are. As always, this newsletter and the silly stuff I talk about in here feels utterly inane at times of crisis like these and I could not be more understanding if you are not in the mood. But for those who are open to it, I hope it can offer you some temporary distraction from the horror.
Here’s one thing that I know for sure will lift your spirits if even just a centimeter, and that’s the fact that Fran went to the groomer yesterday and got a full blowout and a bow in her hair and is now perfectly rotund and looks like a giant stuffed animal:
Can you believe this creature is real and lives in my house?
I’ve otherwise lost all interest in talking about myself this week, so instead let me just briefly talk about my favorite dumb pop culture stuff that happened since we last spoke. For starters, I am loving the toxic Hollywood moms and I want to be included in their many fractioned group chats desperately. If you’re not up to date on this blog-based high-profile in-fighting, I recommend catching up with Gossip Time’s perfect coverage of the shit-posting currently transpiring.
I was likewise charmed by the sneaky video taken of Alix Earle and Tom Brady flirting in St. Barts. Forget the fake Deuxmoi reports, this is the boots on the ground tabloid journalism the people crave. I can’t decide though what was my favorite part, getting to see Alix’s hand hesitate before going in for that overly long and languorous back rub or the fact that the flashlight on Tom’s phone is on in his pocket the entire time. Celebrities, they really are just like us!
And, of course, today’s title is taken from a heavily memed TikTok of Alabama Barker showing off her luxury Christmas haul. Everything about her and her persona should technically be totally off-putting, and yet for some reason time and time again I find myself charmed by her un-media trained candor. This particular statement is also how I learned that the masses do not know what Pucci or its prints are???? And I am deeply troubled by this revelation. Open the schools!
Now just a little housekeeping before we begin. Our Simulacrum & Simulation book club meeting last week went shockingly great for a book none of us felt confident we’d actually correctly understood. I continue to be delighted by just how clever everyone in the Lowbrow Book Club is and the fantastic questions and theories they bring to our conversations each month. This week, we also announced our new book for January which is Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell. It’s a super interesting look at the way cults operate through language and it is INFINITELY more readable than Baudrillard. So if you’re looking for a thought-provoking, yet low-key, way to kick off your reading goals in 2026, please join us for that.
Also, based on my poll last month, the consensus seems to be that people want to chat on Substack not Discord! So I’m going to leave the Discord open, but start turning more of my focus towards engaging on Substack Chat. At the moment, however, unlike Discord, chat is only available to paid subscribers, so if you have extremely pertinent thoughts to share with the group, please make sure to upgrade your subscription so you can do so. The people demand your insights!
And finally, I’m going to be streaming the Golden Globes red carpet on Sunday at 6:30pm est and I do believe I’ve finally ironed out all the technical difficulties this time. I’m using a new streaming system called OBS so we can do screen-in-screen viewing and it is NOT an intuitive application in the slightest. But I think I’ve got the basics down now, and I hope to see you guys on YouTube on Sunday!
Ok, here we go.
Y’all ever feel like you’re just screaming into the void?? Yeah….yeah.
I am genuinely BAFFLED by all the stories announcing the arrival of butt cracks in our future when all Messketeers know that the crack has BEEN back since even before April of 2024 when I wrote this story proclaiming it to be so for The Cut. What is going on. What is this pro-crack agenda? Is big intergluteal cleft handing out checks to media outlets to do ass-forward spon con now? And if so, where the hell is mine?!
New Horcrux Acquired
And I don’t wish to speak about this family when we’re all already in such a delicate mental state, but I do need to point out that yet another pop culture horcrux has been acquired. For Christmas, Kimberly gifted Kourtney Pee-Wee Herman’s bike from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and as the self-appointed president of the Pee-Wee Herman fan club I am doing my best not to let myself be overcome with seething jealousy. Kim’s celebrity auction addiction knows no bounds. Another day, another iconic cultural figure subsumed into her own iconography.
2026 Fashion Predictions Realized!
And thanks to the Critics’ Choice Awards, mere days into the new year, all of my trend predictions are already coming to fruition! Not that that’s particularly hard to do when it’s all stuff I’ve already been telling you was trending at the end of last year, but still I’ll take it!
These are apparently the real singers behind KPop Demon Hunters and I am instantly a fan just based on how closely each of them is following my Mess memorandum on 2026 dressing. Rei Ami (left) is wearing a Chochengco Couture gown featuring not only padded bolster detailing around the chest and neckline, but also — my personal favorite element — plush detached cuffs! An inspired new frontier for this engorged trend.
EJAE (center) went for a classic pannier hip skirt and we should all just be thankful it’s not a bustle.
And Audrey Nuna (right) wore a full Marc Jacobs Spring 2025 look complete with the bubble-toe clown shoes and I think you really need to see it on her Instagram to understand the perfection of this non-human silhouette. It’s an ambulatory Rorschach test. It is exactly the embodiment of the 2D trend I’ve been talking about — flat shapes applied statically stop the body to create a sort of bulbous paper doll effect. And I also love that she did the same Betty Boop lips as the models on the runway.
Critics’ Choice Awards Best Dressed
My only other two notables from that night were Erin Doherty and Jacobi Jupe. Erin because people kept asking me what I thought of this dress and I was like, well, I have definitely seen it somewhere before……and then immediately clocked it as an even more deflated version of Ariana Grande’s deflated yoga ball Louis Vuitton dress from last year’s Palm Springs International Film Festival. Yes, my brain is exclusively chock full of this type of useless information. But I also think this gown gives credence to my theory that all those voluminous 3D shapes we saw last year are about to go through their Ozempic era and come out slimmed down, collapsed, and drained of their firm rotundity.
As for Jacobi, he was easily my slam-dunk pick for best-dressed man of the night. As I’ve tried to tell all these famous guys for years now, turning boring black tie into stunning black tie really is as simple as doing something like adding a little pearl detailing to your silk blouse, and yet almost nobody ever bothers to do it! Anyway, I hope to one day dress as chicly as Jacobi.
The One, True Mess Muse
And not all is lost on the fashion front because MY QUEEN HAS RETURNED. Nothing puts a goddamn pep in my step like Kristen Stewart concocting the type of insane press tour outfit that literally only she could come up with. This is her genius, her exceedingly rare acumen. This is why she remains a Mess Muse par excellence.
Because absolutely nothing about this outfit should work. Every single thing is wrong. And that’s what makes it so unbelievably right. She remains Chloë Sevigny-levels of cool and imbues that coolness into everything she does. Even just the simple choice to layer a muscle tee and flannel-lined sweatshirt atop this sheer sequined gown is a master class in K.Stew styling savvy. Thong out, bundled on top, do not try this at home, kids! Or do! And then marvel at Kristen’s singular ability to pull off not only this mixed-weather outfit, but bangs that look like she let her 5-year-old niece take a whack at ‘em. We simply must stan.
Mink Muffs and Inflatable Platforms
Ok, someone else I am starting to stan against my will and better judgement is Stefon Diggs. While I obviously came for Cardi, he officially has my attention now.
Stefon and Cardi wore coordinated vintage Chanel fits to his football game, and while I found Cardi’s to be a bit of an Elle Woods tragedy, I instantly zeroed in on Stefon’s fabulous logo-laden fur muff. Yet another accessory I have been begging the rich to bring back into vogue since they first started dabbling in Victorian petticoats in 2024! I am seriously enamored with this historical hand warmer and I love the way it renders the wearer’s hands effectively inoperative. I think a powerful new avenue of attention generation for famous people is attire and accessories that somehow restrict their movement or necessitate them to rely on others to perform basic tasks, and the muff is a great first step in that direction.
And then, while looking for the photo on the left, I discovered the photo on the right of Stefon doing post-game interviews in these Thom Browne inflatable bowling balls they call shoes and I found myself charmed anew. Are these not exactly the alternative to Pleasers I was requesting on the podcast this week?? The proverbial apple crate upon which celebs can artificially inflate their stature? Stilts truly can’t be too far behind!
The Bieber Effect
Lately, I’ve also been seeing a whooooole lot of news stories out there about how 2026 is going to be the year of skinny pants for gentlemen, and well, first of all, given how we began this email, I think we should be a little more wary of trusting magazine’s to accurately predict the future of our fashions. Also, I’m sorry, but the trousers I’m seeing out there on the red carpet are telling a very different story! Of course, the truth of the matter is that there are no definitive pant trends anymore. It’s a grab bag of everything all at once. But also, I feel Oscar Isaac’s ERL look at the Frankenstein premiere made quite the statement to the contrary, wearing a tuxedo silhouette truly only Justin Bieber could love. His colossal pant influence!!
Alien-Inspired Nuptials
Speaking of fashions nobody likes but me, sorry not sorry, I love Este Haim’s wedding gown. It’s a retro-futurist Victorian bride fever dream and I find that mashup to be absolutely divine. This is also exactly the wedding dress I would expect Louis Vuitton creative director Nicolas Ghesquière to make at this particular juncture in his design ethos. The man has been loving a big old shape. He can’t help himself but to slap a wing on every available surface. Shoulders, hips, one way or another, he’s gonna make a frilled lizard out of ya.
And while people were quick to label it Amish, I actually much prefer this dress with the jacket on. Ghesquière keeps doing this really minimalist spaghetti strap V-neck thing on every red carpet dress he’s made lately and while I understand that it’s about creating visual balance, something about them always conjures up visions of bad prom dresses for me. Besides, give me a giant mutton chop bridal sleeve any day of the week!!!
Husband Gal Dressing
During our break, I also became very taken with Heidi Klum’s beach towel printed with a stern, airbrushed portrait of her husband. My only wish is that this was a full-on evening gown instead of just a beach accessory because tell me there’s not something extremely Vetements about this concept. And as perhaps our premiere example of a husband gal (the wife guy’s rarely mentioned counterpart), I’m actually surprised Heidi hasn’t already compiled a full wardrobe of garments plastered with Tom’s visage.
A Beckham-Peltz Drama Update
The last thing I must leave you with today is a quick update on this email’s most treasured, beloved, and profoundly boring billionaire couple — The Beckham-Peltzs. We now have official confirmation straight from the horse’s mouth that there is BEEF betwixt them and the couple are in fact being shady towards Brooklyn’s entire family on Instagram to the point of blocking them all!!!! The damage Marc Anthony has unleashed upon the Beckham brood is untold! Where is Jada Pinkett Smith’s Red Table Talk when you need it because if ever there was a drama she, her mom, and Willow could get to the bottom of, I feel it’s this one.
Ok, my aspiring Bond girls. Tragically, that’s all the swill I’ve got to share with you today. I hope you’ve enjoyed partaking in these putrid fruits of high fashion and please circle back to the YouTube channel on Sunday at 6:30 pm est for my Golden Globes red carpet takedown. And no matter what you get up to, I hope you have a joyous and restful weekend, Messketeers! <3
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I saw someone else say that Anne Shirley would love the eldest Haim’s wedding dress and I agree with that.
Thank GOD Stefon Diggs has joined the chat. He’s been so good and mess coded for so long