Showing posts with label fashion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fashion. Show all posts

Friday, September 20, 2019

Art imitates life imitates art imitates . . . oh, dear

March 19, 1956: I Love Lucy

The Ricardos and Mertzes are in gay Paris. Lucy wants an honest-to-goodness Parisian designer gown. Ricky doesn't want to spend that kind of money.

Lucy has an idea (Here is where everyone needs to run for their lives). She will go on a hunger strike until Ricky buys her an honest-to-goodness Parisian designer gown. Lucy has another idea (If you're still around, you deserve the Armageddon that's about to descend on you and all). She will have Ethel sneak her food, so that the hunger strike actually isn't. Lucy hides the food all over their hotel room.

Ricky feels guilty. Ricky gives in. But then Ricky finds a roast chicken in a camera bag. Ricky grabs the dress box and runs off. Ricky and Fred decide to "show" Lucy and Ethel. Ricky and Fred have Jacques Marcel "designer dresses" made out of potato sacks and put phony Jacques Marcel labels on them. And as a crowning touch, they give Lucy and Ethel a feed bag and a champagne bucket as "designer hats."

People stare at Ethel and Lucy. People laugh at Lucy and Ethel. Humiliation abounds. Ricky and Fred feel guilty. Ricky and Fred buy them real Jacques Marcel dresses (again).

Later . . . Ricky, Fred, Lucy and Ethel see the sack dresses and unique "hats" on models for Jacques Marcel. But Lucy and Ethel had burned their unwitting "designer originals."

Cue face palm from Ricky.


Sept. 20, 1967: D.H. Holmes ad, Baton Rouge, La.

Holy crap.
And that's why you come to this here little blog, folks. There's no absurdity that I won't notice.

Friday, June 07, 2019

Turning working girls into pretty women is our bidness


Baton Rouge: June 6, 1974.

The decision is made that if you cannot do anything about working girls downtown, you at least can turn them into pretty women.

Either that, or my hometown was the epicenter of unintentionally hilarious advertising during my youth.

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Does it get any more 1960s than this?

Does it get any more '60s than this 1967 Paul Mauriat LP cover? Inquiring minds, etc., and so on.

My gut reaction is probably not . . . which opens up all kinds of possibilities, being that this is an easy-listening album, not to mention visions of middle-aged Hef wannabes sporting ascots and wildly age-inappropriate garb. Which, of course, argues strongly for this being the most '60s thing ever.

On the other hand, I was 6, my parents had not progressed past 1955, and they made me get a crew cut. Complete with Butch wax.

So my opinion on this might be completely worthless. Alas.

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

How did they sleep?

We should have seen the end coming a half century ago.
It was as plain as a patchwork plague, courtesy of your haberdasher from hell. Which in this case was the 1969 Sears Wish Book.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Holy Hash Pipe, Batman!
One thing never changes, however -- copy editors are always required but never in adequate supply. I'm reasonably certain that the headline above the Red Menace display at left should have read "Family Nightmare."

Tuesday, May 07, 2013

Truth in headline writing


And the award for most truthful headline ever goes to The Inquisitr website in a story on how the freakish -- morally and otherwise -- CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch doesn't want fat people wearing his clothes . . . for basically the same reasons that "uncool" kids get bullied in junior high.

Sometimes, your average teenage bully ends up like Biff Tannen does in Back to the Future -- first, covered in manure and then, 30 years later, detailing George McFly's luxury vehicle.

Other times, though, he ends up as CEO of a company dedicated to fetishising everything that's wrong about America . . . and with the human soul. And then he eats your teen's brain -- which, quite frankly, this dude looks quite capable of doing.

With a nice Chianti and some fava beans on the side, no doubt.

But it's a free country, and if you or your kids want to be a whore for "that partially melted penis candle," as The Inquisitr so aptly described Abercrombie's Biff-in chief, Mike Jeffries, no one's going to lock you up before you debase yourself and the culture you inhabit. Just don't hand me any hypocritical crap about the glory of "diversity" or the evils of bullying while you're wearing hell's preferred casual wear.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Hometown hurricane inside baseball


I've been in the Midwest for a while, y'all.

This means I have grown accustomed to looking to local government for, well . . . government. This means I've grown unaccustomed to looking to local government for entertainment.

Then another hurricane hits Louisiana and I end up glued to the computer, watching the hometown TV news online, and suddenly I'm confronted by some clown dressed unconvincingly in police casual as he tries to rock it like Clint Eastwood rockin' it like Dirty Harry.

Again, unconvincingly.


And I'm thinking "What the f*** is this?"

THIS THOUGHT LASTS for a split second. Of course, it's the mayor of Baton Rouge, Kip Holden (right).

And of course, it's a hurricane. Hurricanes mean that Baton Rouge mayors have to start acting all bad ass -- it's a city ordinance or something, I think.

They have to tell people obvious things as if the fine citizens are abject morons -- which, of course, many are. They have to threaten to arrest all those potential offenders of the public order, throw their asses in jail and then laugh when Yankee civil-rights advocates demand that arrestees be supplied with soap on a rope.

I think I even saw Kip do that corner-of-the-lip thing. He even may have said "punk" a couple of times, but don't hold me to that. I was laughing pretty hard -- it all was soooooooo Baton Rouge.

I MEAN, if you were a looter, would you be deterred by the sight of . . . that?

Me neither. By the way, nice flat screen you have there, Your Worship. And you keep the jewelry and cash where again?

And for what it's worth, I think the Boss Hogg look (top) would work a lot better for you. And if you could have a joint press briefing with Gov. Bobby Jindal when he's doing his "Mister Rogers on speed" act, that would be great.