Victor/Victoria?: The Menswear Trend in Women’s Fashion

Gentle reader,

All day I’ve wracked my poor brain trying to think of a fresh angle on fashion to bring you.  I thought about it at the gym when I wasn’t calculating how many more reality TV “celebrities” will have to start working out there to outnumber the gay porn stars.  And I thought about it on my hike to the Hollywood sign until I heard a booming loudspeaker ordering silly tourists, no doubt, to stop trying to climb the hill up to the letters.  I swear, they should shoot just one of them and this perennial problem would be solved.  They wouldn’t even have to aim for the head. 

Lord Robert Walters Naked

Milan Fashion Week Spring 2013: What the Hell Just Happened?

Gentle reader,

A new show called Secret Princes, about four young princes looking for love, debuted on TLC the other night and I’m sure you’re just dying to hear about it.  The premise is wonderfully simple.  They fly in to Atlanta where they’ll live in a rundown old house, work minimum wage jobs and pretend to be regular guys because, you see, busboys get chicks way easier than European princes.

This might be a good time to point out that, despite the title, two of them aren’t actually princes at all.  One guy is a hunky British underwear model named Lord Robert Walters.  Those familiar with the titled aristocracy will know that the use of “Lord” is murky at best, especially when followed by the first name and more considerably when the guy is an underwear model.  The Honourable Ludovic Watson is also a Brit who isn’t a lord but still outranks Lord Robert on the title scale because his father is a baron, though one never addresses a British baron as Baron X, only as Lord X, which is all rather confusing.  Hailing from a big, bleak-looking country house in Yorkshire, he arrives in the ATL wearing a silly tailcoat, which annoyed me more than it should, probably because I was likely to do the same in my youth when many of my friends were lords and “Hons.,” like those on the show.

Secret Princes

L to R: Salauddin Babi, Robert Walters, Francisco de Borbón, and Ludovic Watson

The other two seem to be actual princes.  Chubby, smiley Prince Salauddin Babi of Balasinor comes from western India where he lives in a big compound he’s named the Garden Palace when, from the looks of it, it should really be called the Drywall and Stucco Palace.  There’s also Prince Francisco de Borbón who seems pretty American save having an enormous crest on his jacket and fully staffed houses all over the world.  Oh, and being descended from the royal houses of Spain, France and Germany.  It seems like this could’ve been the perfect Battle of the Eurotrash Douchebags, but these guys are all very cool and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens now that they’re settled in.

The Shorts List 2012

Gentle reader,

While I was all wrapped up in the commotion over the collections for this coming fall, then Resort, which will take us all the way into next spring, summer came and smacked us in the ass.  I suppose it does seem an arbitrary season in L.A., where it might be sunny and hot in January, but then we’re all pulling out our sweaters in gloomy June.  That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be more on the ball helping you guys make the right choices, especially since the summer designer lines are already on sale.  On second thought, maybe that’s a good thing because now you can get this stuff at a discount if they still have your size.

We saw a lot of shorts on the runways for the Spring/Summer 2012 season and the message seemed to be that shorter is better.  I don’t necessarily agree with that, however, and I certainly don’t think many of you should be sporting the blazer and short shorts combo that Bravo stylist and Zoe-foe Brad Goreski likes so much.  Coincidentally, I saw Brad at the gym this morning and, though he was wearing shorts, even he didn’t have a blazer on!