People That Annoy Me

Anyone get the South Park reference in my title? Anyway, I am not writing about naggers, but instead a couple of things that really annoyed me this morning as I tried to have a relaxing cup of coffee and a read through all of the blogs I follow.

Tom Ford naked, with more naked guys. Photo from WWD.

1 - Tom Ford and other male designers getting naked. This great WWD article talks about how many male designers today are stripping down for photos. OK, don’t get me wrong, I love Tom Ford, and I think he is a genius (so is Marc Jacobs), but I am really not interested in seeing him naked, or hearing about how he loves to be naked. Nor am I interested in seeing Marc Jacobs naked. Firstly, they are gay, and I automatically block out any attraction to gay men, whether they are good looking or not. Secondly, why the hell is this becoming a trend? Does this mean that, on top of designing 12 collections a year, being a business genius, and designing for a fast fashion brand, fashion designers also have to pose naked? I love a fashion designer because of their talent, their drive, their skills, and their creativity. I am not interested in seeing them naked. Tom and Marc, put your clothes back on.

Marc Jacobs naked. Does this make you want to buy his perfume?

2 – The LOVE magazine website. I tried to like LOVE magazine when it came out, but I couldn’t. I measure a magazine’s quality in the time it takes me to read it. Longer time = better content and they have something to say = better magazine. That’s why I don’t like magazines like Grazia (takes less than 5 minutes to read cover to cover), Vogue is nothing special (takes less than 15 minutes to read cover to cover) and Vanity Fair is genius (takes at least an hour to read.) LOVE took 20 minutes to digest, which was not good news since it was one of the most anticipated magazines releases of recent times.

The LOVE magazine homepage. Looks like it is trying to be cute, and it is not working. Cartoon animals on girl's crotch is not cute or edgy.

The other thing that annoyed me about LOVE was that is was another clique-y club where Katie Grand (the editor and well-known fashion stylist) just worked with her friends. I know that is how fashion works, but for some reason I can stomach the Mario Testino – Tom Ford – Carine Roitfeld – Tom Pecheux – Marc Lopez clique from the late nineties more than I could stomach the Katie Grand – Giles Deacon – Luella Bartley – Stella McCartney clique. I nearly wanted to projectile vomit when the first issue of Pop magazine came out (also edited by Katie Grand) and we had to see Stella and Luella half naked doing poorly executed pole dancing moves. ON THE COVER.

LOVE magazine website: these are all the different articles. This looks nice, but it is very slow to navigate.

So, basically, I have yet to be convinced about LOVE magazine. I subscribed to their blog a while back, and it was painful to read, so I ditched it. Now they have launched a website, which appears to be something designed by a 5 year old, with no functionality, no logic, and a giant logo in your face at all times. Why is it that Katie Grand can get away with this type of thing? Conde Nast is behind this, and they are the publishers behind Vanity Fair (we love), Tatler (addictive stories about Britain’s high society, which we love, and the best travel guide ever), and Vogue (we love Italy’s and we stomach the rest.) Does Katie just say “I am going to make a website, make it hard to use, challenging to understand, and all my friends are going to make it, and give me $100K so I can make this happen!”???? And Conde Nast says yes because it will look good? All of you that have read this far will probably be checking out the website right now, here’s the link, and I’d love to hear your comments. Yes, it looks good, but do you think it makes any sense? Or has purpose?

This is a page from the website. I think it is about a model, although the logo is in the way. And what fascinating text.

A Fendi fur keychain. Exciting. And how does it relate to a glove?

3 – World Cup Sponsorship. Like the Olympics, the World Cup is just another excuse for big brands like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola to shove their logos and products into our faces. There’s been a lot in the press about the frustration with organizers FIFA, since World Cup is meant to be about sport, not greasy burgers and sugary drinks. For me, World Cup is also about one of the only sports that IS played worldwide, and that you don’t need to have tons of expensive equipment in order to be good. It truly is global.

McDonald's. The official restaurant of the FIFA World Cup. Is McDonald's a restaurant?

Anyway, I winged on about the sponsorship dictatorships already, because I was very frustrated during the Olympics, so all I can do is beg my British readers to try and use their voices to prevent the London 2012 games from becoming what Vancouver was, and the World Cup is about to become: a sponsorship dictatorship. You can read my anti-sponsorship rant in the comments section of this Business of Fashion article, but just to give you an idea, Visa managed to ban all Olympic venues from accepting anything other than cash and Visa, because they were the sponsors. NO DEBIT CARDS. Ridiculous.

Now that I have vented my frustration about things I am annoyed about, I’d just like to say that there are a lot of things that I love, and here’s a little list of things I love today.

• Coffee
• Sleeping in until 7:30am (that’s sleeping in for me)
• My good looking plumber for fixing the disaster in my pipes
• My Mom and aunts for being awesome poledancers (trained by me, of course) and their little routine, which is so cute (p.s. 40+ year olds can learn to poledance for fun, and they don’t have to be strippers. It is also one of the only sports that can be done in high heels.)
• Charles Jourdan, for being a luxury footwear brand that hasn’t been destroyed by WAGS and for making the lovely pumps I wore yesterday.