pattern junkie

Unfortunate Fashion Friday: When Bad Suspenders Happen to Good People

This week's UFF inspires terror in me for what it might do to my, er, assets...and I'm only a B cup.  Who at Simplicity thought backwards suspenders (with their nice "cross my heart" look) and a tight empire silhouette was a good idea?

Simplicity 8739

Unfortunate Fashion Friday: The "You Got Peanut Butter In My Chocolate!" Dress

Welcome to Unfortunate Fashion Friday, a new feature here at PJ where I share the odd, the horrifying, and the just plain wrong.  (Let me state right at the outset that I'd love nothing more than to be proven wrong about my UFF choices -- so when one of you makes an amazing version of something I've picked, send it my way!)

On to the mockery.  The Big 4 are busy releasing their new spring lines.  There's some great stuff out there, and then there's McCall's 6280:

Those of you who grew up in the 70s & 80s like I did probably remember the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups ads that purported to tell the creation myth of Reese's yummy wonders.  A librarian might be standing on a ladder eating a chocolate bar, only to accidentally drop it into a patron's open peanut butter jar after he bumped into the shelves, or a quarterbacker running down the field might ram into a cheerleader and the same chocolate bar/peanut butter jar confluence would happen.  (No, they never explained why people were walking around eating from open peanut butter jars.)  The point is, the wacky collision would always result in one person exclaiming "You got your peanut butter on my chocolate!" to which the other would reply "You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!"  Then both would realize that the two flavors were fantastic together. 

Here's an example:

 

Which brings us back to that dress.

It's never good when you look at a design and your first thought is "What the hell happened there?"  Really, I look at this dress and all I can do is envision the wacky, Rube-Goldbergesque collision at McCall's HQ that caused two halves of cute dresses to get stitched together like Frankenstein.  Maybe if it were done in all one fabric.  Maybe if that lovely cape collar extended to the other side...maybe if the interesting hip detail extended to the other side...

You see where I'm going with this.  Asymmetry can be cool, but these are two great tastes that do not taste great together!