After singing Go Fug Yourself’s praises in the twittersphere, the Fug Girls responded with this:

If you haven’t read their blog, you must.

www.gofugyourself.com

Happy Holidays!

The whole world is blogging on everything and anything. With millions of blog posts created every second it’s hard to know what’s worth reading.

Tavi, the 13-year-old fashionista, is the most talked about fashion blogger of the year. The teenager’s blog, which was at first thought to be written by a fashion insider, has become world-famous and “the tiny dork that sits inside all day wearing awkward jackets and pretty hats” recently took a week off school to visit New York fashion week and hang out with designers and fashion lovers alike.

Not only has she become the new darling of the fashion world, the seemingly down to earth Tavi, features in this month’s relaunched Pop magazine and has been interviewed by Pixie Geldof in Katie Grand’s new issue of Love.

I have a compiled a list of my some of my favourite fashion related blogs (in no particular order), enjoy the wondrousness below…

The Cherry Blossom Girl

This lovely, artsy french fashion blog, written by designer, Alix,  is a viewing delight. The posts feature beautiful photos of models from a fashion insider.

The Sartorialist

This is street fashion at its best. Photographer Scott Schuman’s highly successful blog is full of trendy New Yorker’s and regularly features in GQ.

Go Fug Yourself

If you’re ever feeling bad about your lack of millions of spare cash to go out and buy those Prada boots or Armani suit – remember money doesn’t always equal good fashion sense. Go fug yourself is a collection of celebrity fashion disasters and will give you a quick feel good fix and proof that fashion knows no mercy.

Liberty London Girl

This lovely blog is eccentrically English and features photos, gossip and breaking fashion news. It is written by an anonymous British fashion editor living in New York and is always first with the latest scandals – most famously beating everyone else with the news of Topshop breaking into America. Expect the owner to be fashion royalty.

What Katie Wore

A different outfit for a different day of the year. This east London couple took on the mission and documented it though this lovely, comforting and lovingly addictive blog.

Taylor Momsen, apparently over it; image courtesy of gofugyourself.com

So, did ya’ll know that Taylor Momsen fronts a rock band? I guess that’s why she’s always sneering each time I see her on Go Fug Yourself. All this, and Leighton Meester working toward a pop career too!

Now, I don’t want to seem snide or condescending, especially about a veteran child actress transitioning into adulthood. I don’t want to speculate that her interest in music has developed just as the once-hot teen soap she’s on is starting to cool. Who am I to suggest that the Gossip Girl star’s musical forays aren’t sincere?

Apparently Momsen’s been singing for years and fronts a band called The Pretty Wreckless. While essentially a solo project with some (male) hired-gun musicians, she is the act’s vocalist, costume designer, and primary songwriter. The group has been putting on shows and has recorded a single, “Zombie,” which has a raw sound that suggests Momsen’s listened to a lot of Courtney Love.

Momsen channels Love when fronting her band; image courtesy of buzznet.com

Momsen’s done a lot more to suggest she wants to explore music beyond adding another hyphenate, like one-time would-be pop singers Hilary Duff, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Nicole Richie, who at one point was in a band with model Josie Maran called Darling and was supposed to be working on an alternative-influenced solo project that may or may not see the light. Momsen even plays a bit of guitar as well. I’d hazard she’d do more of it if she’d bulk up. Have you seen her twiggy arms? Homegirl needs to eat all kinds of sandwiches.

But I am a still little incredulous, as I am about Momsen’s entire hipster image, which became public just as Jenny Humphreys was becoming the UES’s edgy It Girl on Gossip Girl. There’s something just way too pre-fab about all of it that makes me wonder if there’s any real difference between Momsen wears skinny jeans and when, say, the Jonas Brothers do it (or, as Jonah Weiner points out in an article Kristen sent my way, when Miley Cyrus hires producers who swipe from lesser-known songs for indie cred). After the controversial but transformative presence Rachel Zoe had in reinventing Nicole Richie’s public image, I work under the assumption that all celebrities have stylists and that Momsen’s no exception, even if she herself is interested in fashion. I can’t help but wonder if similar industrial mechanisms are at work for her and her musical aspirations.

Maybe I’m just being snobby about medium and public image. While I have my doubts about Momsen’s musical pursuits, I never questioned when fellow former child actress Jena Malone released a seven-inch with Social Registry back in 2007 and continued on as the lead singer of The Shoe. Assuredly this has much to do with an appreciation of Malone’s experimental sound.

Jena Malone, in concert; image courtesy of jena-malone.info

But I’d be lying if I said my enjoyment of Malone’s music wasn’t informed by my pre-established fandom of her turns in indie-friendly fare like Cheaters, Saved, and Donnie Darko. It probably didn’t hurt matters that she has lesbian parents, legally emancipated herself as a minor for financial reasons, and appeared in public with a bald head. In short, her outsider persona matched her acting and musical choices. It seemed, to employ that ickiest of value judgements, “authentic.”

That said, I support Momsen’s right to rock out. But I’ll have to hear and see more before I call myself a fan.

Here on AutoTunes, I try to be very very loyal to the guiding concept, which is to say, if I don’t hear an Aretha song in the morning, I can’t talk about the fact that over the weekend I watched part of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame special that was on the HBO, and that Aretha of course performed, and that as always I was mesmerized by the size of her boobs, and as always I commented to my fella about how each one is bigger than my head.

So thank god for the Go Fug girls. Is all I’m saying.

It’s un-fashionista, dare I saw UN-AMERICAN, to not love the gals at www.GoFugYourself.com.

But just this once, I must politely disagree. They fugged Rihanna’s houndstooth boots, and since I’d like to be buried swathed in houndsooth, dressed in head-to-toe McQueen houndstooth, in a houndstooth coffin … I’m gonna have to tell them they got it wrong!

I love these boots Ri Ri!

Cher? Dion? HELLO?!?

We’re old enough to have seen “Clueless” in the theatre and loved it. Still love it, in fact.

Given our affection for that greatest of all mid-’90s movies, it seemed obvious that this kind of, sorta, maybe a celebrity person was totally ripping off Cher and Dion’s style. Totally.

Which kind of make sense, given that this “Clueless” over-the-knee stocking style was the last time hosiery was tres chic!

Thanks GFY!

Jessica Alba funks up her ca. 1983 outfit with knee socks.

Thing is, we think she looks pretty good. Not fugly at all. In fact, her boot-knee sock combo is down right great.

Is this early ’80s look something just about anyone could pull off? No way. Pleated shorts aren’t easy, and bland, earthy colors don’t do much for most of us. But Ms. Alba isn’t an average anybody and darn it if she doesn’t look really cute!

Oh, by the way, that boot-knee sock combo is super easy for just about anyone to rock, anytime. Plus, it’s absolutely perfect for fall, when mornings and evenings are chilly but days are still warm. And, as Ms. Alba demonstrates, boots with knee socks will add a little chic to any hum-drum outfit. (Jeans tucked into boots is so passe!)

OK, that headline didn’t really work. My topic today is Ms. Alicia Keys — the lovely, the talented, the I’m pretty sure I would like her work but I really only know three things about her: 1) The song that made her famous (as far as I know), about falling in and out of love and so forth. 2) Stevie Wonder seems to dig her. 3) She shows up a lot on Go Fug Yourself, where they seem to root for her despite her dubious fashion choices.

Back to the song: I have well documented my adoration for a car song with trills and swoops, and this one makes the list. I love the way Ms. Keys makes one syllable into many. I love her throaty little “uh-uh, uh-uh” noises between lines. And I love the cascading wordlessness of that cheesy middle section. Oh man, it’s just good for singing along with. End of story.

You wouldn’t want to miss this $1.5 million bash.

Bethenny Frankel has been replaced!

This woman definitely dances like no one’s watching…

How do you rock a one-sleeved dress?

Lindsay Lohan can’t design clothes either.

Earn some money for getting good grades!

So, before I go into my post about Anna Sui’s Gossip Girl-inspired Target collection that launched last summer, I’d like to first announce something totally superfluous but strangely encapsulating. I am down to the dregs of my Anna Sui Dolly Girl perfume. My mom bought it for me several birthdays ago and it is a delightfully flirty fragrance that I only wear when I need to feel publically sexy. If I went to your birthday party, going-away party, theme party, house-warming, wedding, or any other BIG EVENT, this is what I smelled like before I got sweaty and/or drunk. Priced at $35 and lasting over several years, it has definitely served me well.

Anna Sui's Dolly Girl; image courtesy of fragrancex.com

Delightfully flirty and publically sexy seems to be Gossip Girl’s chief M.O. The CW teen drama, created by O.C. mastermind Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, is now in its third season and based on the popular tween book series of same name by Cecily von Ziegesar. It focuses on the soapy, bitchy, frothy excesses of a gaggle of teenaged haves and (to a lesser extent) have-nots and their parents in New York City. Importantly, its wardrobe is in essence a principal character, largely due to costume designer Eric Daman’s keen eye for established and emergent talent in contemporary fashion. The show has launched once-fledging talent like Blake Lively, who has appeared in pictorials for Vanity Fair and on the cover of Vogue. It has also scored previously unknown actresses like Leighton Meester into a spokeswoman deal with Reebok. 

Vogue cover girl Blake Lively, February 2009; image courtesy of bryanboy.com

The show has proven itself bit of a taste-maker. How else to explain why this “silly” teen soap (with a considerable hip twentysomething following) got the coop of having Christian Dior’s Miss Dior Chérie advertisement air for the first time during the “Bonfire of the Vanity” episode? Oh, and let’s not overlook who directed the spot — Ms. Sofia Coppola, herself a hipster icon, fashionista, erstwhile clothing designer, sometimes design collaborator, and friend to folks like Marc Jacobs and, yes, Anna Sui.

BTW, I remember this really interesting feature Seventeen did back in 1993 with Sui, Coppola, and friends Zoe Cassavettes and Donovan Leitch, but cannot find it on the Interwebz. If curious, please contact your local library. When you find it, note the crocheted shawls, chokers, matte lipstick, and other hallmarks of early-90s fashion they’re wearing that are now making a comeback. 

Bringing publications like Seventeen into the discussion make inevitable the show’s fanbase and target audience, who tend to be pre-teen and tween girls. Thus, there’s probably a fair amount of aspiration that can be marketed toward (a euphemistic term for “exploited”). And while I feel kinda icky about the proceedings, especially since Sui’s Gossip Girl-inspired togs tend to be mid-range ($30-$70), I at least can recognize that these clothes are more affordable than, say, Louis Vuitton, or even some of the garments sold at mall retailers like Express, Banana Republic, and The Limited. 

The market-driven desire to dress like a gossip girl suggests a particular cultural power, perhaps one not since seen since Carrie Bradshaw became a game-charging sartorialist (and Sarah Jessica Parker became her). The Gossip Girl cast’s on- and off-screen wardrobe (and, in Taylor Momsen’s case, the merging of the two) has also provided fodder for fashion blogs like Go Fug Yourself, much in the same way that producer Josh Schwartz’s name-making franchise The O.C. Gossip Girl has even taken its fashion-plate status toward self-reflexive ends. In the season two episode, “The Serena Also Rises,” a fashion show seating chart appears on screen, with Fug Girls Jessica Morgan and Heather Cocks’s names on it. 

Thus, the show, like other Schwartz-helmed programs, is known for its intertextuality. So it seems fitting that a television show — particularly one as creative as marketing and distributing itself in an increasingly digitized and convergent media climate that young women have been especially adept at traversing, would try marketing its show through clothes. It’s a move with a bit of recent history (Grey’s Anatomy for New York & Company) and a bit of current cross-promotional play (Mad Men for Banana Republic, which Jonathan Gray has critiqued).

But having Sui team up with Target to design for Gossip Girl it is interesting, and smart in terms of the show’s investment in fashion, both as an industry and as a bridging cultural practice. Like Gossip Girl, Sui’s work has been characterized by her ongoing interests in popular music. Gossip Girl’s music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas defines the show by its of-the-moment “indie” sound, which in turn gets referenced, idolized, and critiqued at length by the show’s characters in much the same way it was on The O.C.. Likewise, Sui is often inspired by popular music — particularly 60s garage rock, 90s Britpop, riot grrrl, and mod culture — and incorporates the attitude and aesthetic into her designs. 

Actress Emma Stone wearing Sui's mod babydoll dress, designed with Blair Waldorf in mind; image courtesy of thestarnews.info

Both the show and designer have a preoccupation with the 90s — for the show, it is an era that commercialized alternative rock and, for hip dad and former rocker Rufus Humphrey, it is an albatross. Sui might feel similarly about the era, which was her zenith period and was not repeated in the 2000s when peer designers like Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen, and Stella McCartney made the career move to be house designers for Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, and Chloé, respectively. Sui instead followed in the footsteps of designers like Betsey Johnson and continued to cultivate her brand from a slightly lower tier, opening boutiques around the world and continuing to create new collections, but largely outside of the elite world of haute couture. Likewise, Gossip Girl is not a big player on television with colossal ratings. It’s not on a big-four network or on a prestige cable channel like HBO.

(Note: Obviously, if one wants to read into Sui’s professional position her marginalized status as one of the few Asian American female clothing designers, there is ample room for this. Admittedly, I have not done so here, but would be very interested and encouraged by what others might have to say on the matter.) 

But both designer and show have cultivated their kitschy, hip brands toward less-travelled though no-less-populist ends. Thus, it makes sense that Sui would link up with Gossip Girl (apparently, her favorite television show), and that they would link up with Target, a big box chain with affordable prices, a cooler and more ethical socioeconomic reputation than Wal-Mart, and a relationship with designers like Isaac Mizrahi, as well as M.I.A.’s former roommate Luella Bartley and Michelle Obama’s go-to guy Thakoon Panichgul who, like Sui, have created limited edition collections for the retailer.

Now, having already discussed the problematic nature of fixing a price range and marketing a clothing line toward an intended audience in such a blatant way, I’d like to close by casting a critical eye toward the clothes themselves.        

A dress for Blair, Jenny, Serena, and Vanessa; image courtesy of mahoganyglam.com

One issue I have with the collection is how focused it is on dresses and skirts. While supposedly each outfit is designed with a particular gossip girl style in mind (specifically Serena’s boho chic, Blair’s classic glamour, Jenny’s runway punk, and clearly cast-aside Vanessa’s vaguely ethnic intellectual look), all of these items can easily be paired together because of their overt, unproblematized femininity.

Another issue, and one that Target faces with all limited collections, is whether big-name designers cater toward in-between or fat body types. The clothes’ sizes range from extra-small to extra-large, leaving out women and girls who are bigger. What is more, while these clothes appear to be well-made, many of the designs in Sui’s collection seems to principally flatter a long, lean body type. As a short, curvy girl who wears a size four (which, if we recall The Devil Wears Prada, is the new size six), I would have to belt pretty much all of these dresses so they wouldn’t look like gunnysacks on me (that is, the ones that aren’t so short that they would fail to flatter my thickly proportioned thighs). And don’t even get me started on how stumpy I’d look in a pair of checkered, bowed pedal pushers. NEXT!

I reject the pedal pushers on the right; image courtesy of fashionlooks.onsugar.com

So, while interesting in many other ways, I feel like Sui’s collection suggests that only certain shapes and classes get to be gossip girls when it comes to fashion. I don’t think we needed Target to tell us that, but I hope it inspires other women and girls to either make the styles their own or, better yet, start picking up the needle and thread and putting their own outfits together.

By Keeley Sheehan

Before you leave the house, ask yourself, "Is this fab or fug?"

Remember that scene in Mean Girls when Regina reaches the zenith of her freak out, right before the entire female population of Lindsay Lohan’s fake high school beats the crap out of each other? That was the first time I heard the word “fug.”

Jump to 2008. I’ve spent a lot of time on the Internet looking up shallow things on shallow Web sites. (You can’t spend all your time on the New York Times site, after all.) In my search for all things frivolous, I happened upon this little gem.

The content is not groundbreaking. It does not cover news. At all. (Unless you count live blogging about all the outfits better left in the closet on Emmy night or during Fashion Week.) But Go Fug Yourself is entertaining, and it’s a pretty effective setup for a blog.

They’ve got a handy little list on the right to use if you find yourself overcome with the urge to look at the horrendous wardrobe choices of your favorite B-lister.

The women who run the site, Heather and Jessica, often write for other blogs and Web sites, and they link to those sites on GFY. They write for New York Magazine a lot, which has led me to even more awesome time-wasters.

They just started Fugs and Pieces, a post every Friday with all the stuff they found that week that they thought was cool, but didn’t really fit into the traditional celebrity-wardrobe-rating theme. And of course, they’re using Twitter.

My only complaint is that sometimes their posts are a little too long and ramble on a bit. Each post has a handy picture of the offending outfit, so reading an extra long post is unnecessary with the tacky patterns staring you in the face.

Other than that, I really like the setup. It’s organized pretty well – you can navigate around the site easily, and they link to a lot of other sites that are interesting and relevant. It’s fun, current and they even have a book. The content isn’t exactly making me smarter, but GFY is a good example of a successful blog that draws in readers and keeps them coming back.

So, it looks like IT girl Agyness Deyn loves knee socks. We singled her out before and now this:

Agyness Deyn just might save the hosiery industry.

Honestly, Agyness doesn’t look as good here as she has with knee socks in the past. Sigh. You can’t win them all.

That said, we do really like her boots. Are those Stacey Adams?

A more opaque, possibly colorful or patterned, sock could have made this outfit work. It’s the sheer that kills it, Aggy.

I spend a lot of time on the internet. Call me a true product of my generation if you wish, but it is not uncommon for me to have six or seven tabs open at once, on top of TweetDeck, Gmail, and occasionally Skype. That being said, I wanted to share my favorite blogs in hopes of getting others hooked.

Under the “J’adore” panel on the right, I’ve added all my favorite sites. Some I look at more than others, but they are all really great. I usually like to look at things fashion and style related, so for that my favorites are The Cut, Go Fug Yourself, Park Avenue Peerage, and Mrs. O. For politics and news, I especially like Daily Intel and Shenanigans. I also get three daily and weekly emails from The Zoe Report, GOOP, and VSL.

Most of the other blogs linked are just really pretty to browse through. Today, I am particurally a fan of Darling Dexter and her Daily Wear feature. Good inspiration for me to dig deep in my closet and have some fun.

I finally saw Twilight and now my life is complete because I can understand and gasp*, perhaps in participate in Twilight related conversations (in real life and online).

I recently read this post on GoFugYourself.com and lol’d with delight. My favorite excerpt is below:

all the vampires in Twilight use a whisk instead of a comb to do their hair.

LOVE IT. That description of the cast’s hair styling is so DEAD ON.

Oh, and don’t worry I won’t leave until I comment about that hideous vampire banner I’ve posted…Robert Pattinson looks realllyyy special there…kind of like an autistic bird, i’m just saying. Did they tell him to purse his lips and look pathetic? Really?!?!?!

Now this is forward-thinking.
This is smart.

HAHAHA — noooo, not in the slightest!
I’ve come to expect NONE of that from any of the rags so deep in denial of their suckitude that they still have the balls to call themselves bringers of ‘news’.

CASE STUDY!
Since January, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel has laid off more than 60 people in an effort to cut costs, trim budgets and Band-Aid that big ol’ boo boo known ’round the world as a cash hemorrhage.

They’re eliminating positions like ‘editor’ ‘reporter’ (or, as John Q. Public would call ‘em: Fact/Spell/Don’t Get Sued/Detail Checkers) in favor of positions like ‘blogger’ and ‘i-reporter’ (which is just a nice way of saying ‘Thanks for the free content, suckweed!).

But despite all of this dramatic bootstrappin’ and cost-cuttin’ and diggin’ deep to find the fix – someone at the Sentinel gave the green-light to employ some skiff to cull through Failblog.org to find the funnies they clearly can’t come up with on their own.

Now, don’t get me wrong.
I love me some Fail Blog! (I also totally my engrishfunny, lolcats and, well, EVERYTHING at the Cheezburger network!)

I have spent many a drunk, sober, angry, happy, confused and otherwise conscious moment clicking through for the heehee and wishing I could be so eloquently inappropriate.
::: it’s an art … :::

But I’m not going around all Zell-ified, whacking people in the shins with the layoff stick whilst hiding behind a facade of purported fiscal responsibility at the same time paying some dumbass to ‘find funny pictures’ as part of a dopey gimmick to artificially inflate crappy stats to justify jacking ppc.

But, you know – that’s probably because I’m constantly amazed you bitches actually like the wretched waste I write … well, that and the fact that my shit’s not ‘a business’ and theirs is.
Meaning if they don’t make a buck they don’t give a fuck.

So instead of getting a clean, easily navigated online offering, we get a homepage crammed with horsheshit we can find virtually everywhere else, while the stuff they have that’s actually worth a look (Chan Lowe) is buried at the bottom of a NINE SCROLL page.
::: DESIGN FAIL! :::

It’s clear the folks corporate suits calling the shots at newspapers these days don’t get it – and the truly sad part is that they don’t seem to be very interested in trying.
And why would they, when they can just drop some coin and rip off a more popular site’s content? Right?

*sigh

Not to repeat myself … but ok, yeah, sort of:
Let us know when you figure out what you wanna be when you grow up – a newspaper or a humor blog/gossip sheet.

I reeeeeeeaaalyyyyy hope it’s a newspaper, because I’d check your shit out when I want, like, NEWS and stuff!

As for the rest?
We already have Wonkette, Stuff White People Like, Confessions of A Pioneer Woman, I Don’t Like You In That Way, Neatorama, Gawker, Jezebel, The Superficial, Go Fug Yourself, Drunken Stepfather, Lainey Gossip, the entire Sugar Inc. family and, oh holy fuck, just so many others for our FREE daily scoop of cool, tawdry, funny, wrong on so many levels but you have to read it anyway … ya, it’s covered.

Stick to your roots and stop picking the fruit from the other trees.
It’s annoying – ‘kay snookums?

SOURCE

This is Phoebe Price. What she does, other than showing up at stuff in horrific outfits, is a complete mystery. Yet, somehow she always ends up on a red carpet. Go Fug Yourself has a great post on her Cannes wardrobe (including this frock here). And while I could go on for days about her clothes, are y’all seeing that tanning disaster that I’m seeing? It’s like she couldn’t afford a whole spray tan, so she just had them spray the tops of her arms orange. WTF?

Pravda may be one of my new favorite sites.  They have the best “photo reports” including one on the clothing choices of Russian stars.

For example:

Too funny.  Is that guy from Rohan?  And have the Fug Girls seen this?

Why won’t jumpsuits die a natural death? They are universally unflattering, unless you happen to be over 6 feet tall. Kate Walsh’s is particularly unattractive, unless she intended to look like a barrel or the Dalai Lama.

Fug Madness at Go Fug Yourself is over and Aubrey O’Day has won.  I am ridiculously disappointed about that.  I was for Tilda Swinton (affectionately known as just SWINTON on GFY) right from the beginning.  At least I can comfort myself with the knowledge that Aubrey only just beat SWINTON, with 51% of the vote, but I am still sad.

Maybe she can can be even more crazy/awesome in her sartorial choices and win next year…