Trend Report from American Apparel

Gaby sent me the link to these mesh harem pants, the glam "new" style from American Apparel. Reviews confirm that, upon wearing, "Men stare and women compliment!" Wow, men stare, do they? What a commendation! It's so hard to get that to happen! I might just have to slip these on and visit a bodega and let the sheer mesh harem pants do the talking, if you know what I mean! And then I can just transition to a gallery opening or a prix fixe meal or an Opening Ceremony trunk sale and I'll fit right in there too!

Says the reviewer, "I wear it with just a basic bodysuit underneath and a narrow belt on top. You cant find anything like this anywhere else!!" How about a mid 80's workout video? What I hate about American Apparel, besides the fact that they suck in every way, is that it's all about mixing frump with slore. All your sluttiness has to be coded in this weird flowy crotch and lank greasy hair or whatever to distance you from the non-ironic, non-pretentious, "run-of-the-mill" ho who you are so much better than. Speaking of which:

What the hell is up with this?! I've noticed this "new trend" at such places as Topshop, the worst store in the world besides American Apparel and also Opening Ceremony: the long shapeless sheer skirt. Finally, we can combine the dowdiness of a calf-length skirt with the sheerness of your favorite teddy. There us nothing more elegant than a cloud of polyester chiffon on a hot summer's day, especially with a thong underneath. Trust me, since you can see your butt though this, men will stare!

Also, these are the worst:

Also, let's give these monstrous, infantile hair bows a rest:

And lastly:

Visors?! Someday I'm going to take the stock from a dollar store and put new prices on everything and change the sign from Dollar Up to American Apparel and wait for patrons. Half the time I see an old Asian lady on the street carrying recycling I think she is an American Apparel type, and then sometimes the reverse happens.

Trend Report from American Apparel

You'll be the laughingstock of simply everybody if you don't rush out to purchase THE latest accesory, the scrunchie! That's right, scrunchies!!! I bet you are kicking yourself for throwing out that final moldy scrunchie you found festering in a drawer in your parent's house from sixth grade, because they are back in all over again! Finally! We here at AA like to deem them an 80's accessory, except that unfashionable people are STILL wearing scrunchies in 2009 because they are just that ugly and cheap. It's time to take advantage of that overlap right now!

And at $6 each, these scrunchies are a real steal!!! But snap them up soon, because they are "limited edition." Someday each one will be worth over $1,000! So scrunchie it up, and when you see that woman working at Arby's in her own scrunchie, remember to smile with satisfaction that you re-started to wear scrunchies right in the nick of time, before that teenage girl still wearing lenseless glasses (poor thing) is doing it!


Take a cue from this hottie and wear seven, eight, or even nineteen at once. But be sure to wax your crotch because the next trend is really going to blow even the scrunchie out of the water....




The high cut swimsuit! We here at American Apparel find that using voluptuous models is simply trashy, so we hire really skinny models to stick their butts out and show off their lack of cleavage because then it's not pornography. Also, we just love models who like kind of ethnic, but nottoo ethnic! (Gross!) Anyway, get ready for the legs of your swimsuit to be cut to your elbows just like in 1989! Ultra-flattering and super comfortable, it's the look of the summer!

As a cover-up, try the aptly named "Le Sac" dress, a dress that is cut like a sack with some cords through it that you can wrap around your body however you want. But don't just wrap any cords around it...

Though these were originally really cheap at $30 (that's $10 per strip of fabric!) they've been reduced to only $24! Think of all the fun, creative times you'll have wrapping these babies around your sack!

And last but not least....
The up-to-the-moment harem pant updated with our cool "Afrika" fabric just like all the "Afrikan" prints that were popular in the early 90's and may have had some political element which has since been erased! Anyway, you'll be left in the dust if you don't have at least one garment with a notably saggy crotch this season! Unparalled comfort, too, unless you are wearing them over a high cut bodysuit, which, of course, you are.

Some Musings on Silk and Crotch Bulges

I've had these photos saved for a long time, but have not done a post about this yellow silk jumpsuit until now, despite it's extreme awfulness. I think it's from Topshop, and it's a real throwback to a simpler time, aka 1989.

>What it really reminds me of washed silk, which was this stonewashed silk that was really popular around 1994. My mom had jewel tone pieces in turquoise and magenta in this awful fabric, which had a sort of dusty, stonewashed quality to it. In fact, I owned a pink washed silk vest. Why would you buy a silk vest for a child? Or, for that matter, multiple silk vests, which is really what I had? This jumpsuit isn't really washed silk, but it is silk, which is a fabric that really had it's last heyday in the 80's. People are always trying to tell you that silk is really valuable, but obviously it got devalued or more mass-produced at some time in the 80's, and now silk is no longer a marker of quality and is sold at Target (though it is a much nicer fabric, than, say, polyester.) I wonder what a silk fabric factory is like, and if it is really full of silkworms?

Anyway, back to this terrible jumpsuit, which is very, very Dressing Sexy, that 1980's fashion advice book that tells you to wear harem pants and jewel tone silks and saggy camisoles also in silk because it makes men with mustaches think of the boudoir instead. (Please click on the "Dressing sexy" label below for that particular post.) This is something that could easily be found in a thrift shop but is being produced new- despite its horrible, saggy, paunch-producing baggy front. Like, do people purchasing the "new" pleated pants not see the above-crotch bulge? Is it a point of pride or what???

Ugly Urban Outfitters Items of the Past Month: Slouch City

Don't these images just scream "Fun! Liveliness! Zest! Well-fitting clothing!"? Let me tell you, they both make me want to celebrate life in a major way. Anyway, I think the model on the left is high on something. The more I look at models, the more this seems apparent. Her horribly bony shoulders are modeling the Truly Madly Deeply Mixed Striped Dolman Top, which is just another one of those things that is a copy of something from the late 80's you could find at a thrift store. The horrible color combination, drop shoulders (shudder) and geometric stripe pattern are what really make it totally '89. There's also a teal/putty/fuchsia one if you're so inclined, or just want to see some really emaciated wrists.

On the right is the Shell Kimono Tee, with the hugest screen print known to man on the front. It looks really strange to have a huge, sloppy screen print on a huge, sloppy t-shirt- you just don't know what to focus on. That shell is so big that it's encroaching upon the voluminous folds of the neckline. What exactly would make someone want this? Whatever is supposed to be happening here, it's not working. The top doesn't need a screen print; it has enough going on.

As many of my friends and colleagues know, in 1986 or something an amazing book called Dressing Sexy (ohmygod, if you have not read it, you have to buy it right now. This will be the greatest $1.50 you will have ever spent.) was published. This helpful guide, complete with photos of heavily made-up models with huge hair, encourages women, in a very Backlash-y fashion, to cool it with all those respectable tweed suits that make men respect you and helped you ease into a male-dominated workplace in the 70's, and start up with the suede tank tops, unbuttoned jewel-tone silk blouses, bed-head hair (it makes men think of sex!), and harem pants, in order to land yourself a Burt Reynolds type and a nice big flashy rock on your finger. The cover shows a woman wearing heavily pleated mauve leather trousers.

As for oh-so flattering Lux Knit Ankle Harem Pants (which are polyester, ewwww), I know Barbara Bergdorf would have approved, especially if they meant to be paired with a shoulder-padded mauve blouse cut to the navel. Which they probably are.

And last but not least, the Lux Paperbag Pant! This kind of reminds me of how, in the 80's, Japanese designers like Yohji Yamamoto rejected the structured glitz and gaudy, Dynasty-esque glamour of the decade, instead designing the dark, avante-garde, slouchy and asymmetrical. And maybe I would have been attracted to this had I been trying to avoid wearing a teal blazer in 1986, but today we have learned that these kind of clothes make your ass look saggy and that the cast of Dynasty actually looked pretty fierce.