I like the blue jumpsuit.

That's image that sprang to mind for me as we were discussing this blue jumpsuit worn by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong at the Madison protest yesterday.

If you don't know who that is in the photo above, it's Jack Lalanne. Why did I know his jumpsuit was blue? I only ever watched him on black and white TV. His daytime show began in 1951 (the year I was born).

"Decades ago, the world of fashion was smaller and feistier, dominated by eccentric, visionary designers trying to express themselves...."

"In 2000, John Galliano showed his infamous 'homeless chic' couture collection. Alexander McQueen’s 'Highland Rape' show of torn dresses shocked the industry in 1995. Rei Kawakubo’s spring 1997 line, known as 'lumps and bumps,' remains one of the most significant collections of the century because it rejected traditional sex appeal, distorting and reimagining a woman’s form. It would be impossible to defend 'homeless chic' or 'Highland Rape.' Or Mr. Lagerfeld's disdain for fat bodies, a part of his personal brand, or Mr. Galliano’s antisemitic tirades.... But as fashion becomes more consolidated and homogenized... it hasn’t seemed to figure out how to provoke and shake up aesthetics and culture, creating crazes that people open their wallets to be part of...."

Writes Amy Odell, in "The Rise of Fashion Slop" (NYT).

A Monday morning juxtaposition. .

I see this at the top of the NYT right now:

Sterile wealth, romanticized poverty, and mindlessness about sleevelessness.

1. The family of 5: "'Money right now, there’s not enough. Literalmente,' said Ms. Torres, speaking Spanglish. 'Sometimes I feel bad, like I can’t do enough for my kids.'"

2. The Biebers: "The 2,792-square-foot apartment has two kitchens — an open-plan kitchen for entertaining, with marble counters and Scandinavian larch wood cabinetry, and a secondary chef’s kitchen with stainless steel and matte aluminum cabinetry. The primary suite looks out to the Hudson River..." The living room, I see, looks out onto a big TV screen and turns its back on the uninspiring skyline of New Jersey.

3. The presumed dearth of sleeves: "In all of the discussions about body positivity and loving the different parts of you, including the parts of you that decades of social conditioning have deemed potentially problematic, arms, especially the upper arms, are often overlooked...." The letter writer is urged to "rethink the issue" and "learn to love your arms."

This skirt is messing Obama up.

Barack Obama "is really messed up. I'm giving him some time because this beautiful skirt that my stylist Meredith Koop picked out that is my favorite portrait of my mom. He didn't know it existed until just a few minutes ago. I've had a few weeks to settle down"
- Michelle Obama pic.twitter.com/YbjPXRy0OS

— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) June 16, 2026

ADDED: I've seen faces on shirts but I can't remember ever seeing a face on clothing below the waist. I went looking and found this from Jean Paul Gaultier in the 1990s. I think it works because the faces are small and numerous, making it not that different from, say, a floral print.

One giant face, larger than the face of the wearer, feels quite obtrusive. But it's long been accepted above the waist. How long have those things been around? I remember the Che Guevara shirts, circa 1970, but what was the original T-shirt with a big face? My quick research says it was probably the Thomas E. Dewey 1948 U.S. presidential campaign T-shirt — Dewey's face and the slogan "Dew-it with Dewey."

"Tasteslop is slop made out of things considered tasteful. It comes in two flavours..."

"... either AI/algorithmically generated content that deploys recognisable taste markers — a brand mood board featuring a designer suitcase, a skinny-neck kettle, a Dieter Rams book — or tasteful things deployed in service of slop, like a curated influencer dinner for a tech company. The key is that the visible signs of taste have been extracted from their original social context and redeployed generically."

Said the trend forecaster Emily Segal, quoted in "The rise of social media ‘tasteslop’ — and how to avoid it/From clothes to interiors, the internet has created good taste as defined by the algorithm. The trend forecaster Emily Segal tells us how to step away" (London Times).

After Segal coined the term it went viral.... [S]he pinpointed a dinner party at a New York restaurant considered to be classy and slender-spouted kettles as slop, and explained why Jennifer Lawrence’s style is too (“she looks more like a shopper/demographic and less like an individual figure”, Segal wrote). Once you see it …

Dieter Rams? Here's Dieter Rams pointing at things he doesn't like:

Pattie Gonia is making it hard for Patagonia to defend its trademark.

Full Instagram video here.

Read the comments over there and check out the NYT article, "Patagonia Is Suing Pattie Gonia Over Trademark Infringement: What to Know/The outdoor apparel company says the drag queen and environmentalist is using its name for commercial purposes. She’s ready to go to court" (gift link).

Mx. Gonia... said the company was trying to take away their name permanently and “erase an activist”.... Mx. Gonia said the timing of Patagonia’s lawsuit, “at the height of anti-LGBTQ politics and attacks,” was purposeful. “They looked at this political moment and thought they could pull this off without a pushback,” she said.

By the way, I think the NYT is getting the pronoun wrong when it writes "She's ready to go to court." I'm seeing this in Outside: "My name is Wyn Wiley, but you might know me as Pattie Gonia, Patricia Gonia, if ya nasty. I’m a drag queen, I’m an environmentalist, and I’m a professional gay person. As Wyn my pronouns are he/they and in drag, my pronouns as Pattie are she/they."

You might think the easiest solution is to use "they," but in that headline, "They're ready to go to court" would be read as referring to Patagonia. Patagonia has already filed suit. The caption on the court papers, I believe, is Patagonia, Inc. v. Entrepreneur Enterprises, Inc. (doing business as Pattie Gonia Productions) and Wyn Wiley (individually, as the owner/founder). I think the person "ready to go to court" is Wiley, so it should say "He's ready to go to court."

"[S]ocks and sandals were fully associated with nerd-dom, meaning that soon it was time for fashion... to embrace the twosome again."

"And so it did, with multiple brands, including Fendi, Miu Miu and Dior Men all showing sandals and socks on recent runways.... That this has happened at the same time that Gen Z has become increasingly vocal about its general discomfort with visible toes — the subject of multiple 'who let the dogs out' memes and Reddit threads — is probably not a coincidence. (Gen Z, after all, is the consumer group most brands are most eager to attract.) Whether that reaction is due, as some have posited, to a fear of fetishization — there are accounts on OnlyFans devoted solely to feet — or some other generational quirk, it’s a real thing."

From "Are We All Supposed to Wear Socks With Sandals Now? A teacher wonders about the etiquette rules of contemporary footwear" (NYT).

Complicated! I'd like to say wear socks and sandals in whatever combination expresses the youness of you, but as between the people who have publicly overembraced a supposed rule against socks with sandals and the people who are squicked out by the sight of toes, I'd like to skew toward the toe-haters. But make a good sock choice. Wear socks that say: I know what I'm doing.

And for you Roman Empire buffs: "ROMAN SOCKS AND SANDALS: FASHION OR FAUX PAS? In this article Mark Griffin explores the history of this unlikely pairing." ("'Udones' were made either of pieced together cloth or woollen yarn using a type of knitting called 'nalbinding' or something that looks similar to netting called 'sprang.'")

Who jumps out of bed to answer the doorbell?

I'm reading this interview, in The London Times, with Tori Amos:

What do you wear to bed?

A slip. If I’m alone, I’ll also have, on the floor, a pair of cut-off blue jeans shorts, a Rick Owens bomber (above) and a pair of white Roxy sneakers just in case somebody rings the doorbell.

"The artist Michaela Stark, who is known for binding her own flesh so that it spills over, confronting those who see it with their own idea of what is considered beautiful..."

"... and who also posed for a Met mannequin — put it... bluntly: 'It institutionalizes the idea that bodies are different.'"

From "The Met Makes a Statement With 9 New Mannequin Bodies/The latest Costume Institute exhibition expands its ideas of who, exactly, belongs in fashion. Will the gala follow suit?" (NYT)(gift link, so you can see the artist's bound flesh spilling over and the quite interesting mannequins in their fashions).

"Stark [said] that the images that come out of the gala matter, especially now. 'Who’s on that red carpet and what their bodies are like is a political statement,' she said. To really inspire change, she said, the party needs at least some 'fabulous fat women wearing fabulous gowns.' 'If it is watered down to an Ozempic-fueled event of skinny girls wearing paintings on the red carpet,' she said, 'that’s an active denial of what this exhibition is really about.'"

The idea of "wearing paintings" relates to the theme of the Met Gala this year, which is something about the way fashion has channeled fine art. We'll see how literally the gala-goers take it. I hope nobody uses the idea of walking about inside a picture frame. 

AND: The Gala is tonight, so watch for the picture frame idea. It's on my bingo card. So is a "Starry Night" star on each breast.

"One fashionista visibly shuddered when asked her opinion. 'It was terrible. Just awful,' she said."

"'I mean, who was the stylist for that movie?' she gasped, hand to heart. (For the record, it was Molly Rogers, who took over from her mentor, the legendary Patricia Field, mid-way through filming as Fields’s 'dance card was full' with other projects such as Emily in Paris). Perhaps the worst criticism was aimed at the outfits Streep agreed to tolerate for her role. 'They put her in a coat with couch pillow tassels on it! It was criminally ugly,' said one aghast attendee. 'I’ll never get over it.' Or, as Peter Davis, the editor-in-chief of Avenue magazine, said, laughing: 'They should rename it The Devil Wears Bad Clothes.' He went on: 'The fashion was awful but not so bad it was good, like Ab Fab, which the filmmakers should have rewatched for inspiration before rebooting this cheesy, tacky, and worst of all, boring movie.'"

From "Why billionaire fashionistas hate The Devil Wears Prada 2/At an exclusive soiree on Billionaires’ Row celebrating a private screening of the sequel, guests bemoan sequins, sofa-esque tassels and a ‘lousy script'" (London Times).

"In an upstairs room in Capitol Hill, a dozen people settled into a circle of folding chairs — sketch pads in one hand, cocktails in the other..."

"... and watched a model in cheetah print lingerie and bunny-eared kink mask spread across a stretch of red satin. Then they got to work. They came to practice life drawing, but this wasn’t a traditional class held at an arts center or university. This was Kink N' Draw, held, for this session, at a bar called As You Are. The event is part of a proliferating practice around D.C. where people can shell out a few bucks to draw live, naked models at a bar.... 'This is a space for creativity, self-expression and appreciation of the human form in a way that is respectful, open and completely judgment-free,' announced 27-year-old showrunner and Kink N’ Draw founder Dominique Landinez...."

From "Sorry, pub trivia. Nude drawing might be the hippest new event at D.C. bars/The scantily clad events popping up across the city’s nightlife scene are more wholesome than you think" (WaPo).

1. I've spent hundreds of hours in life-drawing classes, so this seems quite normal to me, "but this wasn’t a traditional class." Oh, it sounds traditional enough. So you've got a few props — lingerie, masks. 

2. There are lots of photos at the link, but absolutely no nudity on view, not even in a drawing. We don't get to see any of the drawings. Perhaps that's because the drawings are bad — and not in a kooky amusing way. But I think it's because WaPo is protecting us readers from nudity... even as it sniffs at "a traditional class" and titillates us with the mere idea of "kink" — manifested in the form of a bunny. 

3. Titillation from a bunny?

"We have recently crossed some sort of undeniable threshold, a point of no return in pants-wearing: An Event Horizon of pants."

"Seemingly all pants are in style, which, conversely, means no pants are in style. (Also, literally, pantslessness is in style, according to the no-pants trend seen on runways and red carpets.) We have achieved pants singularity.... 'Social media has decentralized trend authority, allowing multiple fits — from low-rise baggy to capris to short shorts — to gain traction simultaneously,' says Laura Yiannakou, womenswear senior strategist.... 'Sculptural shapes such as balloon and barrel pants also perform strongly in visual environments.'... 'Personally, I think it’s great that there’s not one dominant silhouette,' says [fashion historian Sonya] Abrego, 'because it allows people to have more choice and feel less boxed in by what’s more normative.'"

From "What pants are in style now? You won’t like the answer. Barrel-leg pants, balloon pants, capri pants, track pants and sweatpant jeans are all vying for your attention — and breaking your brain" (WaPo)(gift link, so you can see the pants (and not try to box me in by what's more normative when I'm out and about in my balloon pants).

"Finding a new name was surprisingly easy. A Weatherman would drive out to a rural graveyard and look around..."

"... until he found the headstone of a person who would have been about his age but had died as an infant. Then he’d head over to the county courthouse and ask for a replacement birth certificate. Soon, he would have an official government license with his photo, but a new name and a whole new identity. My dad grew his beard out. My mom cut her hair short, dyed it red, and started dressing like a California hippie—big glasses and flowing dresses—rather than in her signature black leather, miniskirts, and knee-high boots. They set up safe houses—cheap apartments in working-class neighborhoods. They took jobs as construction workers, longshoremen, and nannies—work that didn’t require a Social Security card and always paid at the end of the day, in cash. Meanwhile, their bombing campaign intensified.... The method they used was simple: a young white woman dressed up as a secretary would walk into a building, place a bag or a purse in an empty rest room or office, set a timer, and walk out...."

Writes Zayd Ayers Dohrn, in "My Childhood in the Weather Underground/My parents founded the radical revolutionary group, then became fugitives. I was born in hiding, and spent my early years on the run" (The New Yorker).

"I can be brand new. Whatever."

Betsey Johnson's way of being 83:

"My client’s magazine is a parody that features humorous pictures of dogs, while Vogue is a fashion magazine that features serious photographs of human models."

"I don’t think anyone would have difficulty recognizing the difference."

Said the lawyer for Dogue, quoted in "Vogue Says There’s Only Room for One Top Dogue/The creator of Dogue, a small canine fashion magazine (circulation: under 100), is being sued by Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue, for trademark infringement" (NYT).

And here's a quote from Olga Portnaya, the creator and editor in chief of Dogue: "Art and culture have always evolved through reinterpretation and dialogue. For me, this is a larger fight: I’m not just fighting for my own work and our community, but for other independent creators."

Well, there is Teen Vogue, so you might think there'd also be a Dog Vogue — some people buy expensive clothes and accessories for their dogs — if Vogue had a dog magazine, it might very well be called Dogue, so I do think there's some potential for confusion.

Which tag should I give this post?

Lawsuits I hope will fail

Lawsuits I hope will succeed

Neither

 

pollcode.com free polls

Gwyneth Paltrow's dress was my favorite Oscars look when I saw it from the front in the NYT.

So well-fitted, elegant, and simple. But now, I'm seeing the side and the effect is entirely different. It's trending on X, and people aren't sure that it's not a complete accident or an accidentally-on-purpose "accident":

Gwyneth Paltrow is facing backlash after wearing this dress at the Oscars pic.twitter.com/8y7e7ynG0j

— USA NEWS 🇺🇸 (@usanewshq) March 16, 2026

My prompt to Grok: Do non-stupid people seriously think this might have been an accident? And: I think if an opening that extensive happened by accident, the dress would have fallen off (unless she'd quickly grabbed the whole thing, which she didn't).

I'm seeing some dummies using the cliché "wardrobe malfunction." Let's remember that the first use of that expression was in an accidentally-on-purpose nonaccident. 

MEANWHILE: Gwyneth is auctioning off a lot of her old clothes — clothes that are so normal and un-expensive you might want to just wear them.

"The bachelor banker admitted to Interview magazine that he had not yet made it onto the elite dating app Raya, confessing that he only uses Hinge."

"Nelson, a dirty vodka martini enthusiast, listed swanky Manhattan spots Jac’s on Bond, Bar Pisellino, and Mace as the top places that he would take any lady lucky enough to match with him.... Johnson, a Dallas native, laid out his thoughts on crypto investing and AI, but also confessed to buying 'a painting for $1,400 that is simply a bunch of lines.' He says he owns 'approximately six vests and seven Vineyard Vines quarter zips': an essential part of any finance bro’s wardrobe when kicking off their career on Wall Street. Barclays associate vice president Tommy Doherty, who said he owns up to ten vests, tells Interview readers that they should 'know your risk tolerance and have a well-diversified portfolio.'"

I'm reading "Baby-faced Goldman Sachs bankers could be fired over ‘unauthorized’ magazine photo shoots: sources" (NY Post).

"Unauthorized" is in quotes because, as the last line of the article says, "It is unclear whether Johnson and Doherty obtained approval to be interviewed by the magazine." I'll bet they were authorized and that Goldman Sachs likes getting inane publicity in this form. It's Interview magazine, and the guys are good looking — and they have vests!!! and quarter zips!!!

As for the type of painting that is "simply a bunch of lines." I looked:

Ha ha. Everything turns back on itself these days. In the early days of image searching, I think I'd have turned up something more like Cy Twombly.

Anyway, here's the original Interview article, formatted nicely, with all the "Finest Boys in Finance" answering the same small set of questions, including"What’s the most you’ve spent on something stupid?" 

Milestones in Feminism: The question is not what did the woman do, but what did the woman wear.

The retrogression is not really Trump's. It's Breitbart's. Trump is just passing along the publicity received by his wife:

Breitbart's opinion on aesthetics is worthless. Look what an ugly mess it is:

That's my screenshot from the Breitbart article.

Readers are expected to look past the drink this/don't drink this/robot puppy/robot bunny advertising and read what looks like a press release: "Melania Trump chose a gray textured wool bar jacket from Dior for the historic occasion, pairing it with a matching gray textured wool skirt, as well as a thin black leather belt from Dior and patent leather stilettos from Christian Louboutin."

A "bar jacket," I was curious enough to learn, is the kind of jacket Christian Dior thought perfect for women drinking cocktails in the afternoon at the bar at the Plaza Athénée hotel in in 1947. Did they have "bladder issues"? Did they dream of electric rabbits?

How dare they put a stereotypically old woman sitting on a toilet right next to the news of the First Lady's appearance at the U.N. doing whatever it was she was doing while wearing some very specific items of clothing!

The most covered-up look possible is judged by the NYT to be "Most Peek-A-Boo."

Before I encountered this NYT article — "12 Unforgettable Looks at the BAFTAs Swishy suits, mermaid skirts, skunk feet and more" (gift link) — I had looked at BAFTA fashion pictures and selected this Teyana Taylor dress as my favorite. I loved how extremely covered up it was:

Why focus on the "peek-a-boo"? Yes, there's a slit, but nothing is revealed because there is boot leather hiding the entire leg.

What's exciting about this outfit is the outlandishly extensive coverage.

"The chatbot told Small she was living in what it called 'spiral time,' where past, present and future happen simultaneously."

"It said in one past life, in 1949, she owned a feminist bookstore with her soulmate, whom she had known in 87 previous lives. In this lifetime, the chatbot said, they would finally be able to be together.... ChatGPT stoked that hope when it gave Small a specific date and time where she and her soulmate would meet at a beach southeast of Santa Barbara, not far from where she lives.... It was cold on the evening of Apr. 27 when Small arrived, decked out in a black dress and velvet shawl, ready to meet the woman she believed would be her wife. 'I had these massively awesome thigh-high leather boots — pretty badass. I was, let me tell you, I was dressed not for the beach. I was dressed to go out to a club,' she said, laughing at the memory.... 'So I'm standing here, and then the sun sets,' she recalled. After another chilly half an hour, she gave up and returned to her car...."

From "ChatGPT promised to help her find her soulmate. Then it betrayed her" (NPR).

1. Were there feminist bookstores in 1949? I'm seeing that the first feminist bookstore — Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis — opened in 1970. So that's a fact Small could have tried to check very early in this process. A soulmate in a feminist bookstore in 1949 is, perhaps, too good to check. 

2. If there's one eternal truth about the human mind, it's people believe what they want to believe. But that doesn't answer the question what we do with a commercial operation that takes advantage of that quality. I was going to write "that vulnerability," but is it a weakness or is it the force that drives this whole crazy human world we've got going? The answer is the latter, because that's what I want to believe. 

3. If there were a feminist bookstore in 1949, what books would be there? "The Second Sex," "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," "A Room of One's Own," "The Well of Loneliness," "The Subjection of Women," "Herland" — perhaps a better set of readings than you'll find in a feminist bookstore today.

4. Did the chatbot tell Small to wear thigh-high boots to the beach? I think most people would be put off by a stranger dressed the way she was. I guess the idea was that the soulmate from other lifetimes would recognize these things. Everyone else will steer clear. Maybe when you're out there, walking the face of the earth, and you see someone who's not at all dressed for the time and place, you will remember that this person might be following directions from a chatbot a beautiful dream.