Manolo for the Men

When you’re having a bad face day, there’s nothing better than a shaggy wig topped off with a tartan beret.  At least you can’t see yourself in the mirror.

Pitti Uomo, the most important men’s fashion show, has opened in Milan with offerings like his trapper’s hat from Dolce & Gabbana.  It looks strangely familiar, and not in a good way.  Oh, wait.

Izzy wasn’t aware that there was a Project Runway Canada (insert toque and lumberjack shirt here) until he learned that this guy, Saskatoon designer Evan Biddell, was the winner.

While his “snakeskin” shirt is repulsive in itself, it’s his hair that truly boggles the mind—because, really, if your barber has one seizure, are you really going to let him keep cutting?

Combining roller disco, Larry Bird, and set design from Star Wars, this 1982 ad for Chardon jeans has something for everyone, except those with sartorial taste. Izzy can’t deny that the music is pretty cool, though.

Note how briefly Bird flashes on screen. Despite being immensely popular at the time, the basketball great was unfortunately cursed with a face made for radio, and a voice made for telegraph.

Izzy has no objection in principle to scarlet-letter punishments, i.e., using clothing to publicly shame criminals, but this DUI chain-gang surely goes too far.  The combination of black, white, and bubblegum pink just screams 1980s, and those pants are straight from Zubaz.  More important, the entire outfit defeats the message on the convicts’ shirts: No sober man would dress that way.

According to a blogger at MyItThings, Manolo Blahnik is going to be coming out with a line of shoes for men.   Izzy was very excited by the news, until he realized that from the looks of the designs, Blahnik is apparently trying to appeal to the pimp-clown demographic.  The Manolo, not to be confused with the Manolo, is equally devastated.

The Smoking Gun is featuring a slideshow of some of the all-too-appropriate t-shirts worn in mugshots.  It leads Izzy to believe that anti-social attire does in fact correlate with anti-social behavior.

Ain’t nothin’ like a blousey “sateen” shirt with narrow-waisted pleated trousers.  If this is how the Heartland of America dresses, Izzy is sticking to the Brainland.

Francesca has drawn Izzy’s attention to a series of mind-boggling pages from J. C. Penny’s 1977 catalog.  He doesn’t quite know whether she deserves to be thanked or cursed.  Either way, it helped to confirm Izzy’s speculation that the seventies ruined the color yellow forever.  Also, why the heck is it ambiguous as to whose hand in the gentleman’s pocket?  It’s not as if J. C. Penny has ever aimed for the Bert and Ernie demographic.

Just in time for Halloween, a horror-show of a documentary about Karl Lagerfeld has opened in New York.  According to one review:

Mr. Lagerfeld claims to be “a complete improvisation.”

“I don’t want to be real in other people’s minds,” he declares. “I want to be an apparition.”

[...]

As a child, he admits, he was “unbearable and spoiled” and compares himself to Shirley Temple. Even now, he cannot go to sleep without a pillow clutched to his stomach.

His mother, he says, was “the polar opposite of a typical German mother.” She “exuded frivolity” and “made slaves of everyone.” Mr. Lagerfeld displays a similar mixture of eccentricity and severity. With his white ponytail, high white collars, sunglasses, fingerless gloves (his hands are festooned with rings) and preference for black, he resembles a man of the cloth, “a defrocked one,” he says matter-of-factly.

[...]

His most unsettling remarks concern friendship. Hanging over every close relationship, he asserts, is a sword of Damocles. And he implies that many have been permanently exiled from his court. “Forgiveness isn’t something I’m preoccupied with,” he says. “Turning the other cheek is not my trip. The curtain falls: an iron curtain.”

Izzy thinks that Lagerfeld needs a hug.

Izzy suspects that this oil wildcatter likes pouring on the heavy crude a bit too much.

If plagiarism is a fashion crime, then the fashion detectives has better investigate this suspicious case.  Because really, is it likely that two different designers independently created shiny Mr. Peanut?