Why? What have you heard?
RIP American Riviera Orchard
Hi hi hi!
Hope you are well and staying warm. Is anyone else waking up every day with a deep need to unleash a primordial scream but you’re afraid if you start you’ll never stop? Isn’t it so cool living in a country run by a bunch of evil, decrepit, octogenarian goobers who think they’re playing political 4D chess but are actually just slamming all of their toys (our lives/democracy) into a concrete wall over and over again?! This week, I channeled some of that stress and horror into baking dinner rolls at 10 at night. So clearly everything is going super great and fine and there’s no need to worry at all because the carbs are going to fix everything.
When not avoiding news updates like digital landmines, I attended back-to-back soirées this week like I’m some sort of belle of the ball. I’m pretty sure I haven’t attempted this level of socialization and activity since the dawn of 2020. I’m very proud of myself for not only leaving my house on a frigidly cold night, but then leaving that first event to take the subway to a second location. I started out the evening at a party for the book Larry Fink: Hands On / A Passionate Life of Looking that a friend of mine helped put together. It was held at the Air Mail storefront which I came to discover over the course of the evening absolutely no one at the party had any idea even existed before that night despite the fact that it’s been open for almost a year now and is in one of the bougiest shopping areas of Manhattan….foreboding.
From there, Jess and I ventured onwards to a Substack meet-up held in the bowels of Wall Street. As always, I met a number of people who I am friends with in my mind because of the internet for the first time IRL and they were all as delightful as I expected. We were also graced with the presence of a couple of celebs in the room, who everyone couldn’t stop pointing out and which reminded me that I feel deeply distrustful of all the famous people suddenly popping up on this platform. Substack was supposed to be my Hollywood shit-talking safe place! Something else I always notice about these Substack parties is that they are unbelievably loud. Everyone is chatting so fast and furious at one other you can barely hear the person shouting next to you. I appreciate our writerly enthusiasm though!
I posted a new YouTube video this week recapping my favorite and least favorite fits from January. Everyone over there has been super nice about my content, it’s honestly kind of disconcerting. It seems that the viewing public has been starved for Mess!! So if you want a little refresher on the big themes we’ve been talking about in this newsletter so far in 2025, please check that out:
This week we also released a new podcast for paid subscribers featuring special guest
who is perhaps one of the funniest people alive and made me realize I have a lifelong hatred of sloped walls that I’d never formally articulated.Paid subs are also going to be treated to a live chat of the SAG Awards red carpet on Sunday starting at 6pm EST, so if you’re not already a part of that elite group of style mavens, fork over $5 and set your alarms now.
Oh yeah, and you can still get tickets to watch the Oscars live with me at Littlefield next week!
Ok, I’m ready if you are.
A Little Camp, at Long Last
We’re going to begin today with an outfit that has received the coveted, and exceedingly rare, Mess stamp of approval. Finally, someone has done it right. Emma Stone effortlessly blended humor with good fashion at the SNL 50 event in a way truly every famous person seems to find impossible. This is what the “Camp” Met Gala should have been and never was. The way the popcorn tumbles out of these flaps onto the carpet as she walks is pure comedy. The dress is custom Louis Vuitton and there’s been some question out there as to whether or not LV participated in the popcorn of it all, and given that I highly doubt these kernels were some last minute sight gag Emma cooked up, I feel they definitely knew the gist of it. The better question is do I think this was Louis Vuitton’s stroke of comedic genius? Because you already know it was not. LV, as a brand, is never really funny like that. Now if it was Loewe who made the dress…..
Anyway, my only other thought is I do wish the popcorn bucket was somehow also a functional clutch, or even just had her lipstick buried in the bottom of it under all that corn. But other than that, no notes, perfect outfit.
Pannier Update!
Someone on YouTube took it upon themselves to inform me that it’s pronounced pan-YAY not pan-EAR. The more you know, I guess. But however you want to pronounce it, I wanted to provide a quick and crucial update on the status of the trend as it seems to have unlocked a new level of voluminous recently.
Former Love Island host Laura Whitmore’s BAFTA afterparty look by Hellessy says, sure, you’ve seen pannier skirts, but have you ever considered a pannier sleeve?!? It’s a whole new way to entrap yourself within your own garment. And now that I think of it, I’m surprised we haven’t seen more tops that conscribe women’s arms like this given the current build-a-body era. Seems like a huge missed opportunity to strip women of one more piece of bodily autonomy.
Cynthia Erivo wore a Louis Vuitton pannier dress suit to the BAFTA afterparties that was so wide it’s almost parallel to the ground. Do you think we’ve finally reached peak pan? I mean, how much wider and flatter can we really get from here? That said, I would love to see someone step up and complete the circle. Where’s circa 2015 Solange in Giles Deacon when you need her.
And riffing off my observation from last week that we’re moving into ultra-nude territory where celebs now need to find ways to show us their innards, I found there to be something rather intestinal about Ariana Grande’s Louis Vuitton dress for the BAFTAs. Something, dare I say, prolapse-esque? In only the most glamorous way, of course!
Spill Your Guts
But speaking of the gastrointestinal system, a Messketeer sent me the above Reel this week inquiring how long until we see this squishy educational apron hit the red carpet. But, seriously, it is actually a perfect ensemble and I hope that happens sooner rather than later. I mean, for one, this wearable lesson on digestion is already totally see-through, and then you get the peekaboo cutouts courtesy of all the velcro’d on organs that could be strategically removed and applied for maximum impact. Plus, much like my dream of foam couture, this whole thing just made me realize we likewise aren’t working enough with plush 3D appliqués. As always, it starts as a joke, but there’s genuinely so much to muse over here!
Adult Babies Have Entered the Chat
Now, elsewhere in developing trends, something decidedly adult baby is a-brewing out there. And when you see these three images collected side by side, it seems impossible to deny that fact. I know that the briefs as shorts thing has been happening for awhile now, but there’s just something about seeing it in full tighty-whitie mode — as modeled here by Alana Haim and Keke Palmer — that makes you realize what weird, infantilized territory we’ve waded into.
Which is also why I included Alexa Chung’s look at the British Vogue x GQ BAFTA Fashion & Film Party because while not explicitly diaper, there is something very Victorian child’s playsuit about it. Women being rendered babies via their apparel is a bit of a heavy-handed metaphor for me at this particular historical moment, but there you have it.
And just to explain for those who might be new here and not understand why any of this is happening at all, something we talk a lot about in this email and a key tenet of all celebrity fashion is the indefatigable pursuit of scandalizing the masses. And because we now live in a time where women are literally showing up fully nude to major award shows, shock and outrage have become increasingly hard to come by. This is why celebrity fashion often looks to various fetishes and kink subcultures to mine for rage bait content. The primary example of this being the incorporation of latex and bondage gear into mainstream red carpet apparel. In this email, we’ve also recently tracked the rise of furry paraphernalia, and now it’s time for the adult babies moment in the sun. Breakout your pacifiers and bonnets, ladies.
Where Have All the Helmets Gone
Now, I saw this on Substack Notes and it just made me wonder, why aren’t we doing stuff like this…..do we want to look like we live in the future or not! The air out there is certainly toxic enough you’d think the rich and famous would actually insist on it.
Of course, I love this helmet not for its protection, but rather its face obscuring properties. Mystery and intrigue are things I find to be sorely lacking amongst today’s celeb set and something as simple as an accessory like this could go a long way towards rectifying. It has a certain space age allure.
It also adds a serious dose of drama, like a smog cloud built for one just rolled in. And as I’ve always said when it come to any sort of mask worn by a famous person, it becomes an instant mega fame flex when anyone can recognize you through the covering. And what ego maniac doesn’t want that!
In a world of such constant surveillance and scrutiny, you would think there would be more fashionable gestures like this towards the reinstitution of privacy in the public sphere. I’ve been requesting fun hats, now let’s see some really fun hats that also foil facial recognition technology in the process.
An Anatomical Clutch
One more tiny trendlet I picked up on this week is body part bags. Again, with the actual female body now fully exposed and rather boring, why not chunk up the form into smaller, trompe l’oeil components? Not dissimilar to what Julia Fox did last week with that exposed breastplate.
Comedian Paula Pell attended the SNL 50 event with a purse sculpted to look like a silver bust complete with rhinestone pasties. A tasteful way to achieve the same effect without showing up in your own set of nipple tassels.
And as a serious scaredy cat, Eva von Bahr, the makeup artist for Dune, is triggering every single one of my fight or flight impulses in this AI skeleton gown. It reminds me of the TikTok of that creepy robot the DJ Anyma always uses at the Las Vegas Sphere to guarantee everyone there has the worst trip of their lives. But this dress is also a pretty savvy red carpet move as I feel like the fashion niche for Hollywood’s mistress of darkness has been vacant for far too long. I would love to know where von Bahr got this fabric and handbag from and what the story is behind it. I think what really makes this so great though is it’s also impeccably tailored. Like it’s one thing to show up in this print as a stunt, it’s something else entirely to have it turned into a real, gorgeously designed ball gown. The head purse does give me a touch of Jared Leto at the Met Gala energy, but the fact that it’s actually a functional bag saves it from the cringe.
Kimberly’s Latest Flop
Listen. I know I should be immune to Kim’s flops by now given that’s all she’s ever really doing these days, to the point I had to banish her from this newsletter because I was so bored by it all. But this week she found a way to piss me off afresh at the SNL 50 events and now we’re going to have to talk about it. Kim began by, in her words, “reheating [her] own nachos” by wearing a version of the Balenciaga pantashoe catsuit she was wearing relentlessly back when she hosted the show in 2021. A Groundhog’s Day era of fashion that longtime readers of this newsletter are FAR too familiar with.
I think you can all clearly see what the problem is with this choice in flesh tone unitard. A flesh tone they didn’t even try to match to her actual flesh to at least give us a faux Bianca moment. But I’d also just like to add that, as Mackenzie taught me on this month’s podcast, Kim has inadvertently dissed her own outfit here because the implication of the statement is that the reheater of the nachos is inherently inferior to the original dish. Thus, while Kim thinks she’s just using the latest in cool internet slang, what she’s actually saying is, here’s a slightly worse version of the outfit I wore four years ago. And, to be fair, that’s exactly what she delivered.
As for the evening look, I thought this custom Balenciaga gown was totally fine, extremely standard, run-of-the-mill Kim stuff. Although, I do not understand why everything she wears has to be tailored like it’s a sausage casing. Things are allowed to just fit without being vacuum sealed, you know what I mean.
Anyway, all was well until I saw this shot from behind and realized she’s wearing those goddamn 8” Pleasers again. I am begging her to give up the ghost of being 5’10”. I’ve said it before in this email and I will say it again, if Kim thought she could get away with that leg-breaking height surgery and no one would notice, she would’ve done it already. At this point, these are not shoes, they’re stilts, and they’re not fooling anyone.
And beyond the fact that she is now tethered to this lucite platform for the rest of her life in order to keep up this tall girl charade, she insists on picking the most boring version of this footwear that brand makes. If we must see nothing but plastic mules on this woman, at the very least let them be fun and worth looking at! Pop a goldfish in there and drum up some drama with PETA while you’re at it!! It’s amazing to me the way Kim’s bad outfits always result in me giving her the most inspired PR strategies she’s had since Kanye.
Speaking of, I have one final thought on Kim for today, which is her radio silence on all of Kanye’s recent virulently anti-semitic statements is kind of despicable, no? I mean, on the one hand, I get it. She thinks saying nothing creates distance between their brand identities, and to apologize is to admit responsibility for him or his behavior. But not even an Instagram Story just to say like, hey, love my Jewish fans, that’s not how we raise our children, and I have no tolerance for that type of hateful rhetoric?? Because at the same time she’s pretending she has no affiliation with a man she has four children with, in the episode of The Kardashians that came out this week, she also says that it’s “always good vibes” between her and her ex-husband….just seems like you could’ve at least gotten that scene cut all things considered.
But then again, perhaps this is all just part of her master plan to lean into the unapologetic, mask-off MAGA movement and come out as a full blown nazi herself.
Ok, well, thank you for your undivided attention here today. Every week, you all make me feel like Madelaine Petsch post glam sesh.
I’ll see all my paid readers back here on Sunday at 6pm EST for some live SAG Awards red carpet coverage. And the rest of you will just have to wait until Friday to be blessed anew with my sage style wisdom. Farewell, my friends!!!!
Avast!
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Rock on, divas!
i am fully expecting kim in particular but prob the whole kar-jen clan to go leni riefenstahl style and try to both commit to being the aesthetic of fascism and then, if it doesn't work out, be like "oh no, i would NEVER! how dare you!"
I don't know why but the combo of the title and the cover photo made me think that our sweet, sweet rat boy Timmy and Kylie Jenner have finally broken up, but alas.