Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Vivian Hsu--when bad couture happens to good people

Vivian Hsu recently posed for Vogue China. She got the cover and looked as lovely as one would expect--however...

This is one of the strangest ensembles that has been inflicted on the model/actress/celebrity wearing it and on those wondering what to wear during the current heat wave. A little bit of net fabric goes a long way; a long sleeved blouse made from a gauzy net combined with a long woven patch (I imagine it goes around the back) to cover the bust is way too much. While the top is just dull and commonplace, the very strange combination garment that completes(?) the look is atrocious.

Cuffed short-shorts with an overskirt type thing that looks like it is being attacked by its gusseted pockets. Probably a good look for shoplifting but I can't see many women actually paying for it.


Fashion magazines in the US and UK are known for the lengths they will go to convince a top actress to pose for them, sometimes allowing the actress or her reps to all but edit the story, select the pictures, even decide where it will appear in the magazine. While models get paid (not very much) to be in magazines and simply show up and stand under the lights in whatever is handed to them, celebrities always get to choose what they will wear--or at least pick several outfits from a big selection. I don't know if that how it is done at Vogue China but whoever decided on that aberration should join the reserve army of the unemployed.

The rest of the shoot has one excellent outfit. This black top with lots of embroidered details paired with insanely long earrings and the perfect quasi-rock chick hair almost makes up for the first one:



Regarding the first outfit, big pockets are fine but they have been done much better-for example in this jacket for a popular US children's show from past decades, Captain Kangaroo:

Vivian Hsu from sina.com
Captain Kangaroo from The Smithsonian Institution.

3 comments:

  1. Yeah, the black outfit more than makes up for it. The mind reels!

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  2. She's too pale in almost every photo too!

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  3. She is pretty washed out--I haven't seen the pictures on the Vogue website but it may be due sina or whoever they got them from. I tried to punch them up a bit in Photoshop Elements but they were pretty impervious to my amateur attempts.

    Vivian does look lovely in the black outfit and I even like the earrings although they look like the kind of thing that might get caught in a roulette wheel.

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