But most other Jennifers rub me the wrong way. Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jennifer Lopez - they all drive me nuts. I find reasons to dislike everything they do, even if I'd have done it the same way. Case in point: I don't care how well put-together and mink-eyelashed out JLo is, I've still never looked at a picture of her and thought, "wow, she looks amazing." Her style is not my style. Usually her dresses are too drapey and her hair too tightly wound. She tends to look like she's so carefully constructed shrill alarms would sound if you got too close to her...because, you know, she wouldn't want to get accidentally bumped and have her perfectly drapey grecian sherbet-colored gown swoop the wrong direction or something.
Anyway - caught a picture of her at the Met Costume Gala "Ball" event this week and was absolutely stunned: she looks flippin INCREDIBLE. Absolutely incredible. Not a thing I would change about her look:
Seriously. Click the picture (the original is giant). The eye makeup is staggeringly well-done. The hair: for once not pulled facelift-tight. The dress is picture-perfect, her skin looks positively luminous: she absolutely killed it. Whoever styled her for this even needs a permanent position. She even pulls off the glamourous "don't you want a piece of this" carpet pose with just enough edge that she doesn't look Zellweger-prissy. Love it.
ON THE OTHER HAND.
This girl usually nails the red carpet. I (ordinarily) like her style. She's ambitious - doesn't stick to safe dresses, she'll push the envelope (in a less obnoxious way than, say, SJP and in a less smug way than Kristen Stewart), she'll try high-concept fashion, she almost always looks age-appropriate and always keeps it simple (and chic) with the hair and makeup.
And then This Happened:
I'm not entirely sure where to start. Do I pick apart the limp, sloppy hair? The chewing gum? The lackluster skin, the "applied while driving" makeup, the dress that looks like equal parts 1976 Christmas tree skirt and runner up in the Junior Miss Star Trek Siren competition? It's like she just stepped out of sparkly tar. And yes, that's a flower chain of some sort on her head. Except its metallic? The dress does nothing for her rack, and those strange hip-level seams make her look frumpy. This girl is not usually capable of frumpy. Major fail, Leighton Meester. Major fail. Especially the flutter shoulders. I'd have been a lot more forgiving of this entire misstep if we didn't have flutter shoulders to contend with and if she'd had the good sense to groom the eyebrows or style the hair before wandering in front of the cameras....
Here, how 'bout some more: I can't explain it, but I don't hate this. I don't. Maybe because the color is so vibrant, maybe because her makeup looks great and her hair is actually a nice, soft complement to the severe neckline of the dress, maybe because it's one of her less-kooky getups in recent history, but it works for me. I don't even hate the shoes (though on the legs of a less svelte woman they'd have been a major, outfit-killing blunder). All-in all, it's actually sort of dainty. Sort of. Nice, sedate little earrings, clutch to match the shoes...I dunno, I think it's actually quite eye-catching. And few others could pull it off, so well done, Chloe Sevigny:
We'll follow that "Quirky & Cute" brand of kooky up with a healthy dose of "When Mystic Tan Attacks" brand of kooky. I'm a fan of the body that is Blake Lively. I'm just no fan of what she usually choses to dress that body in. But that's not the problem in this case. Well, ok, it is A problem, but not the primary problem. Normally, she's got a great, sort of naturally sun-kissed complexion (let's go with "Mystic Level 1). I think she stepped it up a few too many notches. I thought it was the cardinal rule of spray tanning that Mystic Level 3 is ALWAYS ill-advised for us white folk. Particular blonde-haired white folk. SO, even putting aside our impossibly tiny Miss America Runner-Up dress and shoes that remind me of something The Little Mermaid's Ursula might wear, the decision to pull all of her pretty blonde hair back so severely (presumably so that we can enjoy the Seasame Street roadkill on her shoulder) leaves us with nothing to look at but her orange pallor. And for a leggy, busty, well-proportioned beach-blonde, we should never have to resort to thinking, "if only she wasn't so Creamsicle-colored."
On the other hand: I suppose I'd rather look like what happened when Stretch Armstrong knocked up an Oompa Loompa than like Elizabeth Banks (because under the banner of ill-advised mating, she looks like what happens when a big, vicious snake decides to nail a crow instead of eating it for breakfast):
Also: as long as I'm being catty....she needs to take a cue from Jennifer Lopez on the proper hue of smokey to use when doing the dramatic, smudgy eyes. Her shade of grey sort of comes off more like High School Cheerleader in the Wet & Wild section of a drug store and less sultry-chic. I'll choose to believe, however, that the dark roots are strategic rather than, um....an oops. Because on the one hand, they do match her shoes (the only bright spot in this outfit....and had she passed on those wretched tights, they actually would have been a runaway hit).
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