I’d think after working as a writer for a few years for any women’s fashion/beauty magazine, you’d get really bored. After all, it’s just a matter of recycling the same topics over and over, each fashion season, every year, on and on. Maybe they just spin a wheel with a bunch of news stories on it in the editor’s office…click click click…”Aaannnnd….there we are. For Fall the theme is “American Gulf.” Let’s go with a shimmery deep teal eye, no blush, matte grey lips and nails. Hair is slicked back wet-style with heavy gel. Pencil skirts with over-the-knee boots to give a gasping fish wiggle. Chocolate brown patent leather for the oil-slick effect. Faaabulous!” The editors have to somehow keep coming up with some kind of fresh way to tell you how to look nice. I’m just going to cut right in and tell you ten things you can do to look just awful, with style.
- Never get any sun. Cultivate a white-blue pallor that gives you that hot new “vampire look.” Think of it as truly being “fashion forward”…right to the grave.
- Get way too much sun. Imagine a perfectly-cooked Thanksgiving turkey; emulate with baby oil and daily tanning bed/beach sessions until that crispy brown greasy goodness appears.
- Never brush your teeth. The yellowed mule/Grateful Dead-follower smile says “relaxed about hygiene” like nothing else.
- Flat greasy hair. Conserving water by not washing your hair makes you seem eco-noble and possibly an unheralded genius.
- Wear clothes that are exactly ten years old. They will be too old to be in fashion, but not old enough to be retro cool, making you mysteriously between the times.
- Smoke. It gives you those multiple delicate skin folds and creases as well as a lovely golden nicotine glow.
- Get inadequate sleep. Makes for beautiful blue-grey orbital hollows with a vibrant and edgy bloodshot eye. Goes perfectly with #1.
- Never exercise. If you have skin and fat that is easily movable in handfuls, you can move it about to fill out places you need a little help with. Duct tape helps.
- Frown as much as possible. It makes you look powerful and important and gives you those nice deep ridges between your eyes, which you can use as pencil holders.
- Make sure all your clothes are either way too loose or way too tight. Having no sense of your body and how things fit on it tells the world you are too deep to care about such things, or live in a mirrored funhouse.
For Spring/Summer ’11, I’m predicting the “’30s Dustbowl/Recession” look with delicate cotton print dresses distressed with small tears and hand-rubbed dirt stains, sensible black shoes, hair pulled back with a rubber band, no makeup. Keep your eye on Vogue or your local Job Center.
© Copyright 2008- Marianne Spellman