Fug Madness 2012, Round Two: Charo Bracket, Part I

 

(1) JESSICA CHASTAIN vs. (9) KATIE HOLMES 

So, in researching this post, I realized something quite remarkable: Jessica Chastain’s ENTIRE four-page archive on our site is from this eligibility year. It’s hard to top her in volume, so Katie’s going to have to do it with quality instead of quantity. Perhaps it will suffice for you that Katie wore this black satin jumpsuit in October, and then thought, “You know what? A lace curtain is what’s going to make it sing.”

It did not. It made it STING. And now Sting is probably going to get mad at me for dragging him into this debacle even indirectly.

The rest of the year, Katie was something of a drabutante:

It’s… eh. It looks like it cost ten dollars. Which is actually okay in some contexts — although, better to cost ten dollars but look like at least twenty — except that she’s at an event supporting a project in which she played Jackie Kennedy. A maligned project that got exiled to Reelz, sure, but you’d think she’d have amped it up a little.

Let’s just do it. Are you ready? Okay: Hi, Katie Homeless.

And this just doesn’t sit right. Or perhaps fit right. Both. That top shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near her chest.

Chastain took bigger risks, for sure, but she also seemed to veer in perplexing directions, bedeviled by fit issues and weird color choices — I mean, when blue was available, why choose peach? — and drab silhouettes.

Or drab everything else. If she and the statue had traded outfits we’d be in a better place, and yes, I’m talking about something that is essentially a gold band and some glass.

Also, she, like Katie, ran afoul of her chest at times. Often, she pancakes them; other times, she constricts them:

Ouch, and also, that eyeliner is too much. Even Kate Middleton, I think, eventually realized she needed to back off the Sharpie. Hell, even Taylor Momsen has been having second thoughts.

Here, and with that terrible makeup, she looks — erroneously — like a cross between January Jones and Christina Hendricks. Christuary Jondricks. Sounds like a pharmaceutical company that makes lozenges. But seriously, explain to me how they can look that replete here, and so invisible in this dress. The answer: bad choices.

Actually, her chest looks commendably perky here, but the nipples are an unfortunate side effect, and the pin looks like a mood ring had sex with a spider.

… Hmm. Chaplin aficionado? Nudist mime?

We didn’t even have the following dress in our archive, because when the Met Ball happened last May, we hadn’t ever heard of her. We did not know what a Jessica Chastain was. Can you imagine? It wasn’t even a year ago.

I think she got away with one.

(4) FERGIE vs. (12) THOMAS JANE

When people ask if I enjoy my job of writing about people’s outfits day in and day out, I think of times like these, and say YES:

It was my unequivocal and wholehearted pleasure, nay HONOR, to be among those who showed these shoes to the world. Because that is HILARIOUS. We know by now this man’s stories history of wearing no shoes at all, so obviously, he should go the other direction and pull out gags like this more often. I dream of a world in which Thomas Jane becomes the foot version of Lee Corso on ESPN — Lee announces his weekly Gameday pick by donning the mascot head of the team he thinks will win, whereas Thomas should start going to parties wearing randomly selected mascot feet. PLEASE.

Maybe Thomas’s bird feet can pair up with Fergie’s avian shoulders. Then they can get married and produce a child who straps wings to its chest and gets beaky lip injections at an obscenely early age, and together, they will equal one feathered creature.

But let’s see how Thomas does when he’s not webbing his own feet, nor inexplicably barefoot, nor inexplicably barefoot in a matchy denim ensemble. How does he fare? Can the gentleman clean up right, as they say?

Ehhhh…

The man really digs his chest hair.

This doesn’t quite fit, does it? Or does it? To me there’s something slightly off about it, like he’s a hat and a blackened tooth away from being a vaudeville tramp.

At least when he has shoes on, I can ENJOY the rest of it. It’s much easier to laugh when there isn’t the prospect of fungus.

It is incredibly easy to laugh at this:

Jessica noted the first time around that Fergie here is totally somebody’s mother’s Cousin Denise, whose wedding was the envy of everyone in 1987 but does not stand the test of time. It reminds me of how when I was a little girl, I thought Princess Diana’s dress was just the most gorgeous gown in the entire universe, and now when I look back, it’s like, “Oh, wow. Meringue City.”

For a second, when we originally put up this outfit, I thought this was Drunkface McCord, and I thought, “Where did she get the budget for such an elaborate portable sex swing?” Mystery solved. Sort of.

In fact, Fergie loves a mystery. We call this The Case Of The Why Bother Hiding The Rest Of It. The sequel is called The “Pants WHAT?” Episode (if you can bear to revisit,or scroll past, my weepy musings about my Dad — fair warning).

And this is ripped from the pages of Scales of Justice, about a fish-human army that comes to Earth to put people in terrariums with only powdered food, and see how they like it. This person is also in that book. We’ll call her Lisbeth Salamander, and we will wonder which side she’s on until it becomes obvious that nobody in those clothes could possibly be in SUPPORT of humanity as we know it.