Fug Madness 2014, Round One: Bjork Bracket, Bottom Half

As a refresher: The photos and links in each matchup post are NOT the only outfits eligible; rather, they’re a representative sample of the body of work from this period (late Feb, after the 2013 Oscars, through this year’s Oscars). Polls close after 24 hours, so if you like to research your choices — on our site, Getty Images, Google, whatever — have at it and just make sure you vote before the game ends. If you need a primer on how all this works, pursue the the FAQ. And, most importantly, have fun.

 

Jump to: Rita Ora vs. Sally Hawkins · Zoe Saldana vs. Elizabeth Olsen · Ashanti vs. Rashida Jones 

(6) LILY COLLINS vs. (11) VANESSA HUDGENS

Lily Collins lived and died by her midsection this year. In addition to the outfits you’ll see in this post, she wore an origami top, a peekaboo bodice, what APPEARS to be a skirt on top of another skirt (with a slice of midriff), a somber black affair, and a see-through red shirt to a morning show appearance in Philadelphia. Most, if not all, were in service of the same damn Mortal Instruments movie, which was basically SPONSORED by The Abdominal Regimen of Lily Collins. This one definitely was:

It looks like it was hacked at with a mortal instrument, for sure.

Are they teaching hybrid Zumba/Hula classes at the gym now? Also, look how similar this top is to the next one:

Why bother owning both, girl? And OH LORD, these pants. We got into a debate over these in the comments of the original entry because I kept calling them high-waisted pants — and they’re NOT, truly; they DO sit at her waist. But the crotch on those suckers is so long that it almost LOOKS like they’re SUPPOSED to be high-waisted on SOMEONE and just fit her particularly atrociously. I don’t even know. I don’t want to think about them. Green leather pants in summer… I hope she and Rita Ora compared notes on how to air out those suckers.

Vanessa Hudgens, as you know, can always be counted upon for a wacky trouser.

She even worked in some midriff for us, there. And here:

And again here:

And this thing WOULD be flashing more if its design didn’t require it to be knotted at the boobs. It’s as if Vanessa psychically divined that the Fug Randomizer Gods would put her in the same bracket as Lily “Crop-Top” Collins, and wanted to be ready to go head-to-head. Lily’s have a little more edge to their fugliness; Vanessa’s look like she just wants to be twirling in a field somewhere, you guys, holding a sunflower again and drilling her soul into the Earth’s gifts, or something.

She might be one of my favorite people. She seems TERRIBLY sweet whenever we’ve observed her (or once, spoken to her) at Fashion Week, and these outfits have taken me to a place where I still think they are as hideous as ever, but I would miss them if they ever left us. Like, none of this makes sense. There is no dictionary definition for this style except that it’s pure Hudge. So much so that she wore an equally hilarious, similar batch of awfulness another time.f

And yes, Coachella counts, y’all. That thing is a three-day paparazzi fest now. People shop specifically for it. They know. When Vanessa put on her eyelet panties and matching torso doily? She knew.

Lest you think Lily doesn’t know how to Coachella style:

She didn’t wear that to Coachella, but the bra and transparent sweater would make a wonderful addition to her wardrobe when she inevitably shows up this year with daisies in her hair. She can also do sloppy, as evidenced by this wrinkly thing; that whole look is very I’m Fourteen And My Mom Bought This For My Dance.

Shall we look at some more formalwear?

Vanessa just LOVES this couch she’s wearing.

And Lily is doing an admirable job not acting worried that she may have caught a fungus.

These two icebergs of fug have much more: Lily wore a shorts suit, Bambi, some kind of lattice, and some INSANELY Bowie eye makeup and a witchy dress to the Met Ball that managed to look less rock-and-roll than Maleficent Fangirl. Whereas Hudge provided us with a pile of terrible hair, a dress that looks like Tetris flipping us the bird, a bodice that MIGHT be made of teeth, and a longer version of something Katy Perry wore to the Met Ball, except… NOT to the Met Ball.

It’s a lot to digest. Take your time, and possibly your Tums.

Archives:   Lily, Vanessa

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(2) RITA ORA vs. (15) SALLY HAWKINS

A lot of people were pretty hot on Sally Hawkins’ chances this year, but I won’t lie: It will be touch for her to get much further than this. Rita Ora is not messing around with her annual campaigns; then again, Sally, presumably, was just trying to look her level best rather than being adventurous, so there’s something to be said for the fact that her level best makes her look like a sister-wife.

That is a whole lot of fabric for such a petite lady, and it’s really unflattering — like someone who went to one of those mass weddings and had to dig around in a big box and put on the first thing she found that didn’t fall off her body.

She kept up with that prim silhouette consistently throughout awards season, which provided the bulk of her momentum. And my problem with it all is mostly that there are actually very pretty elements in all of them, and I get the aesthetic she was going for, but I don’t think it ever succeeded in doing anything but overwhelm her or make her look stuffy. Case in point:

Beautiful fabric, made into an old-school nightie (which I’ve just noticed might be slightly sheer on the sides), the likes of which Jennifer Love Hewitt’s character would’ve worn on the first season of the Ghost Whisperer, back when the show was amusingly daffy and not all about her hair extensions and her dead husband living inside someone else without anybody thinking her rapid rebound was weird. Sally Hawkins could actually star in the indie-movie version of My Dead Husband Lives Inside Someone Else And People Actually Do Think My Rapid Rebound Is Weird But I Can’t Explain It To them. It could be called… let’s say Living In Sinbad, because obviously, we’re going to cast Sinbad as the vessel for her quirky and tender former love, who, when he had a body, was William H. Macy.

And this is a nice enough fabric on top, but the sleeve length is dowdy and so is the skirt, which also has a crease bisecting it right at the labial line. And maybe pockets? It’s a no.

This looks like something Cate Blanchett rejected and offered to her pal Sally to be nice, but Sally never should’ve taken it, because Cate Blanchett in this would look like she was going off on a yacht in Capri, and Sally Hawkins looks like she stole the luggage of someone who was on that boat.

At least she cleaned up her hair game, though; this is what she was sporting on her head before the awards season hoo-ha:

I think it’s been decided that nobody should stand next to Cate Blanchett, ever, unless they are TOTALLY sure they have brought their A-plus game, or Cate has brought her drunkest F-game.

Rita Ora is certainly no stranger to bad hair (also, LOOK AT THAT JUMPSUIT), nor wearing a lot of fabric (like this fur dress, or her plaid suit with bonus black diaper, or the time she looked like a pillow fight), and she certainly isn’t afraid of fabric in a dumpy construction. I mean, look at this Marchesa:

She has a figure, but her Fairy Godmother sneezed all over it, because she was half-assing this and she’s allergic to mothballs.

Here she is the God of War for a tribe of very militant bumblebees. The cut is overwhelming and the side-abs don’t help, because I believe her boobs are being squeezed down and out of the windows.

And that’s just taunting people: “See, I HAVE plenty of material; I just choose not to COVER myself with it.” I don’t even know what is happening with the waist on that, unless it’s to advertise that she’s a black belt in the Thigh Arts. Which you’d have to be, to walk around in this thing and not show everyone the color of her ora.

What kills me about this, besides its aggressive awfulness, is that she wore it IN AUGUST. That must have been so hot. Can you imagine the smell once she stepped out of the sweatbox?

It’s been a busy year for her. She wore not one, but two things with eyes, one of them itself having two SETS of eyes and the other causing us to use the word “facepants,” which I keep reading as “facepalm,” which is ALSO apt. worn other really hideous pants ensembles — like this high-water orange checked thing, and her rank cocktail pajamas, and this flared orange hilarity.

And this:

I don’t even KNOW what counts as the FIRST problem with that: the fit, or the mere idea?

Archives: Rita, Sally

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(3) ZOE SALDANA vs. (14) ELIZABETH OLSEN

I’ll say it for these ladies: Neither one is afraid of much, like the time Zoe wore a pantsuit with a visible bra AND an even WORSE jumpsuit while standing next to Chris Pratt, and Elizabeth wore one that MIGHt have been able to fit Mary-Kate in one of the legs with her.

Here, we have Elizabeth Olsen, wearing a migraine bag:

And in the other corner, we have Zoe Saldana, in something that looks like an ode to counting sheep, satin pillowcases, and blindfolds:

Back to Miss Elizabeth, in a great jacket but also a stringy mess of a sheath:

And Zoe, in good shoes and a hideously kitchy navel prison the likes of which you’d see on a restaurant hostess someplace where you may not really be there for the food.

They also both have a thing for flowers. To wit:

It’s… a tunic over pants, I think? But it’s mad unflattering. It may not hold a candle to this, though:

That may be the single worst garment anyone has ever worn to an awards show in this post-stylist age. It is HEINOUS and the fact that Prabal basically said, “I made this for you and ONLY YOU COULD EVER WEAR IT” does not excuse her, because if Prabal had said that to me, I would have found an emergency exit smart-quick, and if that meant never wearing Prabal again, well, so be it. Like, among all the other nonsense here, I just noticed it looks like there’s a tire tread over her crotch. Charming, Prabal, and apt, because you DID run roughshod over it.

I had forgotten this ever happened until I started doing research for Fug Madness:

Hopefully for her, she forgot it happened three seconds after she took it off, or else she’s probably still suffering flashbacks.

But can it beat this?

That is slinky misery right there. You might recognize all those flowers from Kim Kardashian’s TERRIFYING gloved Met Ball disaster, and they’re no better in this context, either, although one could argue Kim would’ve been better off in this than in that one. It’s still not an appealing choice, like being asked whether you want to eat your glass chopped up in tiny bits or in large chunks.

There’s more: Elizabeth’s strange neck ruffle; Zoe’s strange crotch ruffle, something I called “problem skirt” because it is ruining the top half, and something else I called in my notes, “Skirt like teeth.” Ladies, I don’t know whether to tell you to stop it or carry on, because the former is better for my eyeballs but the latter is better for this Web site.

Archives: Zoe, Elizabeth

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(7) ASHANTI vs. (10) RASHIDA JONES

In which we ask the question, “If a vagina sling carried her far in previous years, how will she do with a neck sling? Or perhaps a frosted vagina window?”

It’s almost modest by some of her standards, actually, but fortunately I’m not staring at it too long because I’m busy wondering if the sock bun on her head is going to slide off entirely.

When I saw this in the background at the Grammys, I was like, “Ugh, some tragic mess is here,” or something, and it turned out to be her:

That’s like if a French maid mated with her hat AND her duster, and if there ISN’T a peekaboo spot built in at the crotch, it certainly wants you to think there is.

Strangely, with this outfit, her vagina is one of the few bits that ISN’T peeking out:

She wholly embraced the belly-button trend, in fact:

And then she wore a seafoam Infinite Dress.

I mean, she’s so freaking reliable. She has rarely met an outfit she liked that also flattered her, and she will ALWAYS go Skin To Win over anything else.

Rashida Jones is the opposite. Yes, okay, here it looks like she’s trying to flash us some undergarment, but mostly Rashida doesn’t just wear fabric, she buries herself in it.

It is swallowing her. And, pro tip, don’t wear a dress of a person’s brain exploding, or else it may elicit the same reaction:

Keep the shoes, brush your hair, and start over, yes?

Did she even TRY with that one?

THOSE ARE PAJAMAS. COME ON. If you’re going to take those shoes out on the town, AND YOU SHOULD, buy some actual clothes for them, child.

Archives: Ashanti, Rashida

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