Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance

Upon first glance: Is that thing from a Dali landscape, Star Wars, Hell or a disco ball? 

I can’t wrap my brain around those shoes and everything around them. What am I talking about? Um, well, aside from presumably millions of dollars of borrowed couture, I’m talking about a music video that is impossible to watch only one time. Lady Gaga (and the Haus of Gaga) have really outdone themselves this time with Bad Romance… and I love it. 

In fact, the outfits attached to those shoes are compelling me to make-up words. Really– you take one good look at the McQueen shoes in front of you and tell me you don’t get all Anthony Burgess on me. I dare you.
 

This video has all the standards from our favorite Fame Monster: lingerie, hairless pets, Bladerunner Replicants, synthesizers, spirit fingers, a foreign syndicate, twitching, latex … and I’m pretty sure she’s single-handedly raised Ferragamo from the dead. Jesus.

Here are some stills from the Bad Romance video… She must wear 10 separate intricate outfits/ dresses/ works, including one by Alexander McQueen that leaves her looking like a creepy, bolted, gold-studded cupcake/geisha/ant with 10-inch heeled stiletto hooves.

“The singer-songwriter-pianist-provocateur seems to be one of the few pop stars these days who really understands spectacle, fashion, shock, choreography all the things Madonna and Michael Jackson were masters of in the 1980s.” (Speakeasy)

Closing thoughts? Lady Gaga and Alexander McQueen need to go pro-create and begin breeding their own little army of slicked back, shiny, matching offspring. Have you seen his Spring/Summer 2010 line that debuted to her soundtrack, with her custom dress from the video as the last outfit in the runway show? Music met couture and fell in love. In fact, they’re paired off  and make more sense than coupling milk and goddamn cookies.

We know we can take you seriously when you said pop music will never be lowbrow. Bravo, Gaga.

Anybody who makes fun of me doesn’t know the truth and is a loser

Wait, what’s that there on the front page of the Wall Street Journal this morning? There’s the Fort Hood shooting, Intel and AMD settlement, Tropical Storm Ida floodings and …Harem pants? Really?

When Maggie Betts wore a $400 pair of black silk pants to a formal family dinner, her mother was appalled. “She said they looked like sweatpants,” the New York filmmaker recalls. A friend accused her of wearing “droopy drawers,” while her cousin said she resembled Luke Skywalker.

“I feel like I look very chic in my harem pants,” says Ms. Betts, 34 years old, of one of this fall’s hottest fashion trends. “Anybody who makes fun of me doesn’t know the truth and is a loser.”

So that’s the lede. They do seem to have dedicated A1 space to dry schadenfreude about fashion-forward women being laughed at for wearing harem pants, which, fashionable at the moment or not, always look to me like the wearer is covering up a really advanced case of uterine prolapse.

It’s not like the writer has to try very hard to make these women into horrible caricatures:

A radical departure from the skinny-pants trend of the past few years, the baggy trousers can take some getting used to. Jean Hall, 24, says the low-slung crotch of her American Apparel African-print harem pants got caught on her bike pedal while she was riding through Brooklyn, causing her to fall off. Her friend, who was riding with her, wrote about the incident on Twitter.

God, I feel mean, but can you just picture that scene?

Ridicule Keeps Fans of Harem Pants From Getting Too Big for Their Britches: WSJ

Jimmy Choo for H&M preview

Yeah so FYI, they released a preview of the new Jimmy Choo for H&M stuff (find a lot of stuff here.)

The collection has a lot of animal prints, sparkly things and embellishments, it’s not really my style, but I would do what I’d do for a Klondike bar for an affordable pair of over-the-knee boots for real, and there’s a pair:

The Jimmy Choo stuff should be in H&Ms on November 14.

via ifitshipitshere

Zahra Saeed

Gah, I love this White Lotus dress by Zahra Saeed. I guess I usually don’t take most stores directly on Rittenhouse Sqaure seriously, because they always seem like places to outfit a child, Pomeranian or overpriced condo of privilege, and I have none of the above. When I’m (window) shopping, I generally don’t venture past the Barnes and Noble on Walnut Street.

But I’ve been missing out, apparently. Philadelphia Magazine did a story on the Moorestown designer’s second collection, and I was super impressed.

The Pakistan-born Moorestown resident (whose personal history includes an arranged marriage, a divorce, and moving her way up the corporate ladder at a South Jersey mortgage bank while raising two daughters; she self-financed her fashion business) is constantly inspired by the fabrics she finds around the world. And with the wholesale success of her eponymous lines throughout Europe and the Middle East, she sees quite a bit of it.

While I generally appreciate color and pattern more, and there are quite a few pieces in the collection that use those fabrics from around the world extremely well, what I especially like here is what this woman can do with plain ol’ white:

And what’s more, she has a way of keeping balance when employing interesting silhouettes and structural bits so that the wearer looks like she’s wearing something neat that you haven’t seen before, but doesn’t look like she got lost on her way to the Met Costume Ball (OK, the one on the right’s a little bit Swan Lake costumey, but I still like it).

I’m not gonna lie, though: her website doesn’t work very well (at least, not on my computer), and if you click “home” you’ll get blasted with unwelcome music. Whatever. Just wander past the Barnes and Noble next time, and check out all this gorgeous stuff from a for-real local designer.

Zahra Saeed, 1905 Walnut St.

Life’s a game

So I’ve been cleaning up the (blessedly minimal) effects of having my identity stolen for the last couple of years, and as I ran around town for the last couple of days printing things, faxing things, collecting other things, getting things notarized, etc. to deal with the latest thing that’s turned up, I tried to burn off some of my frustration by thinking of my situation as one of those LucasArts adventure games I loved when I was a kid. They also tend to involve one large goal, which is accomplished by doing hours and hours of smaller, seemingly unrelated tasks until you stumble backasswardly upon the princess or the secret of Monkey Island or whatnot. This was just like that! Except how I can’t stop playing and it’s frustrating and expensive.

Anyway, I came home with the idea of my life as Sisyphean, no-fun video game still a bit on my mind, and happened across this pair of polygonal shoes by United Nude, which seemed sort of perfect for the moment. The style probably looks pretty familiar to anybody who played video games during the rather quick evolution of computer graphics in the late ’90s:

The United Nude Lo Res is part of an new semi-automatic design method by United Nude. An object is digitially scanned into a 3-D computer model and re-generated into various resolutions. The Lo Res shoe is part of an automated design revolution.

So in celebration of having hopefully faxed my last document and rescued the princess (if she’s not in another goddamn castle), here’s a bunch of stuff based on 8-bit nostalgia that doesn’t cross over into literal video-game territory, like so:

Even though I do find that shirt funny. Anyway, here they are!

Floral rose prints don’t look quite so grandmotherly when they’re pixelated.  Digital-print scarf and dress, from Matthew Williamson’s fall 2008 collection.

Stolen Jewels, by Mike & Maaike. They used google to ’steal’ lo-res images of some of the most famous and ornate jewelry in the world (such as Imelda Marcos’ ruby necklace and this image of the Great Chrysanthemum, on which I believe the above is based:)

and then converted them to tiny leather pixels as a statement necklace.

8-bit dress from Modcloth, vaguely evoking some mod-as-hell Space Invaders.

The Icon wristwatch; numbers would have ruined the effect.

OK, yeah, this one’s literal, but it’s just too cute. From Erin at A Dress A Day.

Broad and Market

Have I mentioned how pleased I am that Maggie, of the street-style photography blog Broad and Market, came back from Japan and started shooting Philly again? The blog has been back and regularly updating from Philly for a couple months now, but every time I try to post on it I remember that there’s some event that night I need to mention or some or Chase Utley hits another home run and I forget… but now!

What I especially like about Broad and Market is… well, you know how there was that funny flowchart about How to Get Shot by the Sartorialist over at Refinery 29:

The Sartorialist, while it certainly is great and what street-snapshot fashion blogs everywhere aspire to be, kind of has a type. I was briefly considering starting to do something similar as an occasional feature for this blog, with the brainstormed title being “OMG, your outfit is amazing!” Not “something I would wear”or “something that looks like it came out of Vogue,” although those wouldn’t hurt, but more like “not something I see every day, and you clearly made an effort to make it that way,” although that title is a little long.

That’s the reason I like Broad and Market so much: I ended up scrapping the idea for a great many reasons, but I feel like Maggie does almost exactly what I would have done. Because while the photo I started the post off with would probably ring the Sartorialist’s bell, there’s also this guy:

And this lady:

And of course this lady, too:

Which: not something I’d wear, nor something that would be in Vogue. But it’s definitely not something you see every day, either.

Say what you want, but there is so much amazing layering and pattern/color play going on here – plus dreads, eyebrows, and the custom baseball cap. If you click either image, you can see the extra huge version for all the little details. For real, who picks out a fitted pastel-quilt pattern hoodie and rocks it like that? This is real good.

Exactly!

What Mean Girls taught me about Halloween

Karen: Why are you dressed so scary?
Cady: It’s Halloween!

Mean Girls is one of my favorite movies. There– I said it! Hilariously written and directed, it stars a then-teen ‘It Girl’ Lindsay Ho-Han (pre-public deterioration) and has amazing comedic supporting roles by Rachel McAdams (The Notebook, The Time-Traveler’s Wife), Lacey Chabert (Party of Five), Lizzy Caplan (Freaks and Geeks, True Blood), Amanda Seyfried (Mamma Mia), Neil Flynn (Scrubs), Amy Poehler (Upright Citizens Brigade, SNL) and– the one and only — Tina Fey.

Fey, who also wrote the script, touched on an amazingly accurate unwritten rule of “Girl World” about Halloween:  “In the real world, Halloween is a night when children dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In “Girl World”, Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it. Unfortunately, no one told me about the slut rule.”

I’ll go ahead and say that in some ends of pop culture, this rule isn’t just for high school. Don’t believe me? Go to any state college campus or Old City this weekend. In honor of Emily G’s Unnecessarily Sexy Halloween Costume Roundup, I’ve decided to share a favorite scene. Enjoy:

Inspiring Fashion at the PMA

One more thing today:

Inspiring Fashion: Gifts from Designers Honoring Tom Marotta presents a collection of runway styles donated by 17 designers in recognition of the creative legacy of the late fashion visionary Tom Marotta, who was vice president of couture at Saks Fifth Avenue. Obtained through the auspices of Saks Fifth Avenue, the garments are all gifts to the Museum and have become part of the permanent collection.

Designers include Peter Som (that’s the purple one above), Ralph Lauren, Valentino, Diane von Furstenberg, Michael Kors, Carolina Herrera, Burberry Prorsum, Badgley Mischka, Ralph Rucci, Nancy Gonzalez, Oscar de la Renta, Donna Karan, Zandra Rhodes, Missoni, Marc Jacobs and Zac Posen.

Neat! And why’s it at the PMA, again?

Tom Marotta (1933-2007) was born and raised in South Philadelphia and spent more than 40 years working in fashion, including many at Philadelphia’s highly regarded Nan Duskin specialty store. He worked in Los Angeles in the late 1950s and early 1960s as road manager for singers such as Fabian and Frankie Avalon; after marrying a Philadelphia native, he returned to his hometown and began his career in fashion. After working in menswear at The Blum Store in Bala Cynwyd, he started work at Nan Duskin, first as a tie buyer, and eventually rising to senior vice president. In 1994 Marotta was hired by the luxury department store Saks Fifth Avenue as vice president of couture; responsible for overseeing the buyers of over 50 department stores, he insisted on maintaining Philadelphia as his base.

OK, then! Cool!

Dr. Moreau is so hot right now

I guess this spread in French Vogue with Raquel Zimmerman is supposed to herald the return to trendiness of animal prints and fur (ugh), but frankly all I can think of looking at the pictures is, firstly:

And secondly:

But wait, deja vu; where have I seen the confluence of French Vogue, Raquel Zimmerman and fur before?

Ha, oh yeah, right, the big “Fuck Yourself, PETA” spread in August 2008.

Shewolf

Vanity Fair has posted pictures of the photo shoot with the gorgeous Shakira. The accompanying article explains that the reporter found her howl from Shewolf oddly alluring by the end of their time with her.

Continuing with the real bodies theme, ESPN Magazine is going to publish pictures of athletes in the buff. BET is especially excited since the magazine will feature pictures of several high profile African-American athletes including Serena William’s cover picture.

Glamour.com asks “How do you apply your makeup?” Using a brush to apply liquid foundation makes a world of difference. We already knew this since some of us at PW Style aren’t especially artistic yet yearn to be creative.  The brushes help with this.

Courtesy of InStyle.com - This bag is called Big Buddha

Want cheap accessories? InStyle has you covered, with their list of handbags, scarves & sunglasses under 100 bucks. Nice.

Lastly, Stylecaster is excited for Sloane and Eric from Entourage to tie the knot. They’ve gone ahead and picked out what Sloane should wear for her wedding.