Sabrina Carpenter Discourse-Free Zone
Fuck ICE.
Hello friends!
Despite what Jonathan Groff and these showgirls might have you believe, things are not feeling quite so razzle dazzle at this particular juncture.
As much as I know that fashion and pop culture can be an important reflection of who we are and what we value as a society, given my pet interests and the usual tone of this email, it can still often feel a little silly to write a newsletter like this at a time in human history like the one we’re currently living through, and that feels especially true this week.
But I suppose that there’s never a truly optimum time for making little jokey jokes and art can never be created in a vacuum. At the very least, I’m always happy to be a cartoonish distraction for whoever needs it as we slip ever deeper into American fascism and all the other apocalyptic shit going on out there. Seeing so much inhumanity and suffering and genocide happening everywhere simultaneously, relentlessly, for years on end is horrifying and horrifyingly numbing. It often feels impossible to take on and impossible to make change. But seeing and being amongst all the people protesting and taking a stand for what they believe in has, and has always been, incredibly heartening to witness.
As for what’s going on with me personally this week, it couldn’t be any more incongruous with the current geopolitical climate. I’m in Maine again, touching grass again, on a little girl’s trip/babymoon with my best friend. I’m writing to you while listening to the tide roll in and a mocking bird running through its full mimetic repertoire outside the front door. Jeff Goldblum wasn’t wrong when he said that life finds a way. Here’s hoping anyway.
Clearly, the mood is a tad dire. So if you don’t want to see rich people looking silly in overpriced clothing, boy do I get it. But if you would like a little chuckle on this summer Friday, I think I’ve got just what you need.
Let’s give it a try!
To begin today’s email, just a friendly reminder that a KarJenner in latex has officially been earmarked as a Mess recession indicator. However, as I’ve previously laid out in this newsletter (and just explained in this video on Instagram), I don’t know who this fashion sighting augurs worse for, them or us.
The Tonys’ Big Winners
With that small detail out of the way, let’s now turn our focus to the main event of this week in fashion — The Tony Awards. I watched the red carpet on livestream with around 100 of you guys and while it was fun to chat and gossip through the whole thing, I felt the actual clothing was sorely lacking. However, my best-dressed divas of this and, honestly, every red carpet this year did not disappoint.
Cole Escola, eternal muse of the Mess universe, looked absolutely pitch perfect in this custom Wiederhoeft gown which they explained was inspired by the dress Bernadette Peters wore to the 1999 ceremony where she won the Best Leading Actress in a Musical award for Annie Get Your Gun. A perfect choice for Cole to pick up their own Tony for Best Leading Actor in a Play and, finally, an actually creative red carpet homage! Cole accessorized the look with ample chest hair and a cameo necklace featuring British actress Laura Keene who starred in the play Our American Cousin. The play where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and which, naturally, plays an important role in Cole’s own show, Oh, Mary! And they finished off the look with an expertly laid wig that I need Nicole Kidman to study very closely and learn from.
I also wanted to give a quick shoutout to theater producer and fashion plate extraordinaire Jordan Roth who seems to be the only rich person in the world who knows how to spend their money correctly and demonstrates that time and time again on these award show red carpets. At the Met Gala, I highlighted his ghostly stack of Stephen Jones Millinery top hats and privately admired the way he transformed himself into a modern day Goliath in a custom pair of Noritaka Tatehana heelless platform boots that added at least another 8” to his already statuesque frame. But the Tony Awards reminded me yet again why he’s one of the best to ever do it, wearing Look 10 from Lee McQueen’s Fall 2010 “Angels and Demons” collection, the final collection the designer worked on before his death. As Roth wrote on Instagram, this is literally a Holy Grail piece of fashion history, just looking at the photos of this collection is enough to make me weep. Moments like this, for me, are the whole point of having money and taste.
A Stiff Upper Lip
Someone on the Tonys livestream said that Sarah Paulson always looks like she’s wearing a sofa and I think that’s very true and also exactly what I love so much about her award show outfits. There is an extreme formality to her choices in couture. She’s not just dressed she’s upholstered in the garment. It’s a sort of plush armor. Here, she’s off to ceremonial battle in this sculptural Schiaparelli Haute Couture number featuring an upper lip-like bolster at the drop waist. But you might also recall her very futon-esque Marc Jacobs dress at the Vanity Fair Oscars party this year that launched a million Build-A-Body musings. Another cult Mess classic!!
There were a LOT of red sequin dresses at the Tony Awards for some reason. Almost as many as their were velvet tuxedo jackets. That said, Nicole Scherzinger’s custom Rodarte version was probably the best of that extremely similar bunch. It’s a perfectly fine, classic choice, but felt a little underwhelming for a Lead Actress in a Musical nominee, let alone a winner. But I could also just be saying that because I’m feeling bitter as I personally wanted her to show up to this red carpet in character totally drenched in blood. Or, at the very least, wearing Alexander McQueen’s blood-adjacent Fall 1998 Joan of Arc dress!
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A Christian Siriano Performance Review
The Tonys made me feel as though I’ve been a touch harsh to our dear frenemy Christian Siriano in the past as his work is not always the pits. It’s mostly just the pits when he’s trying to do something androgynous and flamboyant with menswear. That’s not to say that what we’re currently looking at here is good, but it’s all perfectly, forgettably passable. Julianne Hough is just wearing a straight-up rip of Divine’s iconic red dress minus the sleeves, the gun, and the requisite attitude. I obviously prefer it done the Queen of Filth way, but this is fine too, I guess.
As for influencer Dylan Mulvaney, I think this might actually be the best she’s ever looked??? I mean again, it feels like a very standard prom/mother-of-the-bride ruched gown, from the silhouette down to that iridescent silk shantung fabric, but all-in-all a solid enough fit. And compared to Dylan’s usual red carpet fashion fodder, downright tasteful.
But the most unforgivable of the bunch was clearly Kristen Chenoweth who is way too big of a Broadway icon and legend to be trussed up like a professional ice skater at the Tonys. As I said on the livestream, this indigo gown looks like a mashup of ideas pilfered from Natasha Lyonne’s 2024 Golden Globes Schiaparelli gown and Dior’s Spring 2025 Couture panniers, except all executed very poorly. So perhaps we’re not ready for a full referendum on Siriano’s design prowess just yet…
Shrimp Happens
And ok, I love Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons like they’re my own parents. They taught me absolutely everything I know about taste. But what the hell happened here. This is rough on many levels. I feel like this is a very Raf color combo, especially Raf at Dior, but this particular shade of pink and green are not jiving in the designer’s usual discordant wabi-sabi way. This emerald hue feels over-saturated to the point of pulling focus. The skirt’s all-over beaded and sequin embellishment looks like a shrimp motif crossed with a petri dish under a microscope, and the way that it’s clustered at the waist just draws the eye to the worst feature of this gown.
Because, for the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone would ever choose to segment the body in this fashion. They have chosen the worst possible location for this waistline and then amplified and underscored that decision with every additional design element. If they had moved it up even just 3 inches to her natural waist I feel like we could’ve avoided this conversation entirely.
The most flagrant example of how they heightened this poor choice in bifurcation is this top which appears to be tucked into the skirt, but isn’t actually. The fabric is just sewn to look gathered bubble skirt-style around the hem……I just feel Katie did not escape scientology to be treated so cruelly on the red carpet.
Hot Seat
The last thing I’ll say about the Tonys is that I respect Allison Janney’s ability to slink into a leading man’s lap in a fabulous gown at an award show immensely.
Cleat Couture
And the last thing I’d like to speak to you about here today is nepo baby Delilah Belle Hamlin’s valiant attempt to make soccer fashion a thing. The former aspiring model, and seemingly current aspiring pop star, called that one paparazzo whose team tried to extort $10K from me when I worked at Vanity Fair because I tweeted out one of his photos on my personal Twitter account to document her stroll through a parking lot wearing an outfit that is very clearly heavy-handedly calculated to be ~kooky~. But while it’s quite try-hard, I do admire Delilah’s concerted effort to jumpstart this creative take on the athleisure trend via this designed to go viral moment. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure I’m the only person on the internet who paid any attention to it at all.
Delilah paired these Puma Ultra 5 Play cleats and stirrup socks with a sheer, ruffled boho blouse worn as a mini dress, tossing a net bag with a soccer ball over her shoulder just to drive her sporty point home, and carrying an arm full of books that appear to be some sort of Singing for Dummies instructional manuals. Like I said, way too flagrant with the PR machinations at play here, but she’s honestly doing everything else right and I would love to see more famous people embrace outfits fully concocted in the aisles of Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Ok, Messketeers. It’s been fun taking a look back at all of these (tragically) not-so-bootylicious fashions with you guys, but it’s time for me to mosey on.
See you around, pardners! <3
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Jordan Roth always delivers and Cole Escola is a joy🦋🐝🙏