Hello, Messketeers!
Welcome back to an extra special edition of the letter exclusively for my precious paid subs covering all things MTV Video Music Awards. If you watched the livestream on Sunday night, you already know that I spent the first twenty minutes locked in an epic battle against technology, microphones, and my computer’s generally finicky relationship to reliable audio.
Other than that action-packed intro, however, and despite reportedly a six-year viewership high, I found the red carpet for this event to be shockingly snoozy! Especially considering the rich text for Mess it’s proven to be in years past. It felt like there were hardly any stars that even showed up, and the ones that did they front-loaded on the step-and-repeat so it seemed like folks stopped showing up entirely about 30 minutes before the award ceremony actually began. This caused MTV to start rapidly recycling old footage and serving us the same spiraling overhead drone shot on repeat that only highlighted how weirdly dimly lit everything was. Clearly, I have copious notes for MTV’s livestream production team — such as: learn how to focus your camera on the fly — as it felt like real amateur hour over there.
But setting aside my latent desire to be a production coordinator, there were a small handful of exceptions to the general sartorial doldrums out there which I would now like to share with you, including: Sabrina Carpenter hiring a new makeup artist! A sugar daddy sighting! The hottest new silhouette for fall! And my hyperreal trompe l’oeil bodies trend coming to fruition in the most insanely prophetic of ways!!!!
Let’s discuss.
I’m going to start today with a little treat for everyone, my short-list for the VMAs Most Improved Famous Person. This year, that award easily goes to these two queens of pop, Doja Cat and Sabrina Carpenter. If I had to quibble with Doja, I would say that her outfits often lean a little too costume as opposed to genuinely solid fashion, but as a gal partial to a gimmick, I’m not mad at it. Although, you already know I am most definitely mad at this tired, played-out choice in Pleaser mule. The nicest thing I can say about that is at least they’re butter yellow instead of the same lucite clompers we’ve seen Doja in LITERALLY ALL YEAR LONG. This red carpet was also packed with more of the same see-through iteration of that shoe and, as always, I’m just not sure who we’re fooling here. No one thinks you’re taller, the line of the leg does not actually look longer, the booster seat is fully visible to anyone with eyes. Regardless. This is the first Balmain dress I’ve liked in a long time. Maybe since Tyla in the Met Gala sand dress even? I love the tinsel trim and harlequin print. The whole thing feels very Jeremy Scott to me, which got me thinking that maybe Olivier Rousteing needs to pull that thread and embrace camp whole-heartedly because it’s certainly much more within the wheelhouse of his taste level.
Outfit aside, I LOVED Doja eating her own lipstick on the red carpet. Although, it felt a little too obviously fake to me. Like if you’re going to eat it, eat it. I want to see the red smeared all over your teeth after, I want the actual lip to get smudged and fucked up in the process, I want you to spit out the half-masticated bullet when it’s all over. It needed to be a little more John Waters/Divine levels of gross-out for my taste, but a solid PR stunt nonetheless.
And genuinely, this might be the best Sabrina Carpenter has ever looked on a red carpet! I am thrilled by this major hair and makeup upgrade and feel certain she must have overhauled her entire glam squad in order to achieve it because while it is exactly the same in terms of concept, it is lightyears better executed than we’ve ever seen it in the past. I would still like her to try out literally any hairstyle other than this one, but baby steps. And I knew this dress was custom Valentino off the rip because of that extremely Alessandro Michele color combo. I do think the high neckline is giving her a little bit of an unfortunate floating head illusion, but overall it is likewise a vast improvement on the vague Madonna/Marilyn references of her usual gowns while still staying true to the core of that aesthetic.