Fashion Police: "Classic wilting southern woman trying to out attention whore the daughter"

[purejuice]

....to quote the perspicaceous psychepreserved. I think she has hit the nail on the head.


The more I look at this dress, the more Disneyesque it gets. Shame on you, Oscar de la Renta.

Perfect mother of the bride garment, I think, trying to strike the note of very very festive and very very much not competing with the bride?

I think you go the Old Babe route, which is a very very armored outfit, perfectly tailored, gloves and hat and jewelry also perfectly classic. No skin, no arms, no boobage, no knees. In a pretty solid cool color that is not bright. And is not white. You will want to avoid the kind of carnivorous hats The Parker Bowles wears, with assymetrical crown and a two-foot brim and flowers and ribbons and spirally things and coq feathers trimmed to look like arrows, dude! You made it already and you don't need to command any more attention than you're getting. Let's not forget Monroe in her black beret.


Travelling to Paris suit by Travilla, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

I think the Queen of Sweden competes with Hillary for the worst mother of the bride outfit. She chose it to match the gorgeous pink sapphire jewels, I think. But like Hillary's fuschia, it is too explicitly sexual/girlish a color for your daughter's wedding day, and there are gorgeous taupe chiffons that would make your gorgeous pink sapphires pop, the classic color combo of gray and pink adding to the propriety of your choice. There is a way of winning by dressing in the most beautiful smoke-colored garments. In the words of one of those jewel-encrusted poverty-stricken Spanish duchesses who are my heroes, Nobody cares what you wear as long as the jewels are good.

The quote is from somebody like the Duchess of Alba, 82, who is trying to marry an antique dealer perhaps 30 years younger than herself. She herself holds the title, and unlike the countess who gave the quote, is not penniless.
http://promo.vogue.es/especial_duquesa/

In the case of the cougar bride, I suspect it is the groom who will be wearing the tiara.

Swedish Queen Silvia has also done something to her face that is unsuccessful. Oh well.


Silvia and the recently jilted little sister, who has her own agenda at the wedding, seem to have coordinated their outfits. Princess Madeleine, dude, I know your heart is broken but I have gotten better highlights than that from Joylene at Al's Style Shop in Belen, N.M.. I recommend her.


Joylene

Controlling the little sister at the wedding is a serious problem of which all brides are aware.


Princess Anne in the famous "omelette Norvegienne" [aka Baked Alaska] outfit she had first worn to Charles' wedding 27 years previously, accompanied by a different husband. Here she is wearing it to another HRH wedding of the Duke of Gloucester's daughter. Insulting? Long memory less admirable than maintaining figure.

Please note she also manages to violate the don't wear white to a wedding rule:



Here is the outfit the Parker Bowles wore to her own daughter's wedding.

She's got that classic coat and matching dress tailoring thing down, which I recommend to Old Babes everywhere. Please note that the outfit is, for all intents and purposes, white, and that the hat competes with Kate Middleton's fascinator in a way that is not successful. I'd try to eliminate the more Medusan and raptoresque references from my headgear -- on the other hand, they are so perfectly appropriate maybe Philip Treacy deserves a Nobel prize.



Here is a shot of Waity Katie in her fascinator, whose presence at Laura Parker Bowles' wedding indicated her acceptance into the closest royal family circle. Although she and Prince William arrived and departed separately, she also wore white.




W.K. at Laura Parker-Bowles' wedding.

I think the same rules that apply to the mother of the bride apply to what The Mistress wears to a wedding.

There is footage of The Parker Bowles at Diana's wedding, and I shall endeavor to track it down and analyze, if possible its costume for the event.

As I recall, the footage of The Parker Bowles standing in the crowd at St. Paul's Cathedral does not show that at 26 feet, the train she is wearing with her knee length outfit is one foot longer than the bride's. It does reveal her raptosaurus hat, and I shall not rest until this archival treasure is unearthed.

Comments

[the-sikh-geek.livejournal.com]

Man, that shiteous hat just sums up Parker Bowles deftly, doesn't it?

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

well. philip treacy is probably the best hatmaker in the history of the world. lady gaga wants to be his apprentice, and she is totally on target.
the problem is the choice of the fascinator style. all the 18-year-old "it girls" in London have been wearing fascinators for almost 10 years. i think the parker bowles has taken this to mean that they're now classic, meaning that old people can wear them. and wear them to their daughter's wedding. since fascinators and the kind of crazyass hats british (and african american church) ladies are famous for are all about taking up space and asserting power and sexuality, and attracting attention, wearing such a hat one's daughter's wedding is incredibly insulting.
but this is the speciality of the parker bowles.

[shellebelle93.livejournal.com]

God that dress that Hillary is wearing is an unmitigated DISASTER in fabric.

And, it makes her look batshit crazy. Or maybe that's just the PERKY SMILE.

I agree with you on the hats. Dear lord why the weird corkscrewy things?

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

i will simply note that the bride is looking with affection at her granny. but nothing gets between hillary and her eye contact with the camera.

[shellebelle93.livejournal.com]

...I don't think the camera can look away. Maybe it's afraid to.

Well, Granny looks like a fun chick. But Hillary is screaming LOOK AT ME!

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

afraid, very afraid.

[aliceinfinland.livejournal.com]

That's Granny? I thought it was Madeleine Albright.

Silvia has gotten less Latina-looking and more tight-smiled Swedish in her years on the throne, while Victoria's looks are going the other direction. She is also, Silvia I mean, said to be suffering from early Alzheimer's, poor thing and may not be controlling her impressions as well as she'd like.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

oh dear, that's not very nice.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

is that princess madeleine's excuse for the hair?

[aliceinfinland.livejournal.com]

Madeleine went to art school. So her fashion icons could be more like rock stars than duchesses. That's my explanation for the hair. For the mountain of pastel Kleenex that is her skirt, I have no explanation.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

art school, i like it.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

p.s. how are you? we miss you.

[villagecharm.livejournal.com]

I'm all for Princess Anne wearing the same dress to weddings 27 years apart. It's almost Yankee. That's how you can tell the Old Money at Ivy League graduations - the people wearing 50-year-old clothes they have repaired themselves.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

i'm all for her wearing it. perhaps not to a wedding, when the previous wedding to which she wore it was not a private affair, and her outfit was viewed by 750 million people, the wedding to which she wore it turned out so very badly, and the bride is dead.

[panjianlien.livejournal.com]

Yes. Reduce/reuse/recycle, even a thing so hideous as that dress, but perhaps not to other weddings. Poor ton.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

i should think that any reference to the most famous dead divorcee in history might could be out of place at a royal wedding.

[oneroom.livejournal.com]

How about Jacqueline Bouvier?

I think she might be a better point of comparison. And she was dressed way better, by an African American designer who, according to the blogs, was relatively unknown at the time.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

the whole chelsea/royalty argument came from the idea that the airspace above rhinebeck (i do believe the hudson is a major approach route for all air traffic to NYC) had been cleared for the wedding and the party. we understand that the sec of state was there; this is still as villagecharm pointed out, just way over the top in a republic.
thence, the comparison of chelsea's strapless to the crown princess' and princess consort dresses.
we then moved on to the tendency of female relatives of the bride or groom to wear outfits distastefully competitive with the bride's. like, never never never wear anything white or whitish to your brother's or your daughter's wedding, which seems to be an irresistable impulse for people like the parker bowles and princess anne. hillary's dress, while not white, could not be more garish and way over-furbelowed (as noted previously, a woman of a certain age can have either the bertha, the ombre, the flowers, or the fuschia, but not even two of them. one of them. and fuschia could be too competitive a look-at-me color for MOB, like princess anne's outfit for charles' wedding.)

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

and hill should also have lost the necklace, OMG. she's just a ravening beast in this outfit.

[oneroom.livejournal.com]

What's funny about Hill to me in this picture is that she's actually prettier than her daughter - the makeup and skin and hair are so much better, I think. But the outfit is really quite bad. Hard to know what she was thinking.

I was watching a snippet of Rachel Zoe the other day, and I think I'm going to start blaming the stylists from now on. Or didn't people used to dress themselves?

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

rachel zoe is like a train wreck, i can't stop watching.
i think you have put your finger on part of the problem here. chelsea may be a paragon of womanhood, but bill and hill each are/were better-looking. you don't want to call attention to this on chels' wedding day, for god's sake.

[oneroom.livejournal.com]

If HC had just worn a less ridiculous outfit, she would've still been prettier - she just wouldn't have looked so silly/desperate. So I don't really get it.

I've never considered it before, but off the cuff I think one should be beautiful at her daughter's wedding. It's the flowers that maybe put HC over the top. The hair/makeup are great, as is the color. The cut - which makes her look great, could've been slightly un-princessified and been lovely. But the flowers at the bottom are so weird to me, in a what-was-she-thinking sort of way.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

yes, and it's not like she was putting this thing together alone at night in her laBORatory. oscar de la renta made this dress, and all his custies are old and distinguished women who dress very differently. fie!

[oneroom.livejournal.com]

Got it. I realized too late that I'd posted on the mother-of-the-bride entry, but I missed the royalty explanation previously.