Fug Madness 2015, Round One: Bjork Bracket, Part 2

Jump to: No. 8 Nicole Richie vs. No. 9 Diane Kruger · No. 5 Rosario Dawson vs. No. 12 Anne Hathaway · No. 1 Lady Gaga vs. No. 16 Amal Alamuddin 

4. KATE HUDSON vs. 13. ASHLEY BENSON

I sort of wish Ash Benzo here was going up against a Kardashian, because at Fashion Week she went full Kim:

I mean, I watch Pretty Little Liars, being as I’m totally outside their target demo and in total denial about it. And my reaction to that photo was, “WHERE DID THOSE COME FROM?” Not because I think they’re fake j– I actually think they’re pretty clearly not — but because it’s not like we haven’t seen plenty of her before and WHERE were they?

Strapped down, here, I guess:

It’s as well. Maybe they sent her a telegraph asking that her to obstruct their view of this HIDEOUS shorts-suit.

I suppose you can SORT OF tell she’s got some robust cleav if you look hard enough at her bra here:

But frankly, I feel creepy about that. Even though she clearly is FINE with people staring at her bra, given that she wore a nearly identical motif another time:

NEARLY identical, but not. Why anyone needs to own this type of thing ONCE, much less twice, is a mystery that only Butlerdayton Kansasduke can solve. (Sorry, I had to at least TRY to do a March Madness version of his name.)

Ashley does have kind of a young Kate Hudson look to her, so her opponent here is very apt. And Kate is about as shy as Ashley — which is to say, not at all:

This shows of NONE of Kate Hudson to the best of her advantage. Neither does this:

This is so awful. When you are Kate Hudson — and indeed this is true of a lot of these people — it must take SO MUCH WORK to find something that aggressively unkind to your body, and yet she has done it. What a… rare… achievement. At times like this I always imagine Bridget Jones’s male friend (James Callis, also from Battlestar Galactica) eating her disgusting food and then trying to smile and calling it “special.” This is extremely special.

Whereas this is very typical:

And it comes not only with pelvic bone, but with a precarious cutout. A Bumuda Triangle, if you will. Her cutout-heavy Globes dress was also a Versace, and while some people went wild for it, in the end I think if it had been on Heidi Klum we’d be rolling our eyes. She also badly needed a general hoiking this year, as evidenced by this sparkly Packham and whatever this black thing is.

I don’t even need to show you the front of this, because the back side — and thus backside — is the most relevant part.

It’s — wait for it! — a real bummer. As is her penchant for gym hair, which you can see here, atop a truly problematic ruffled jumpsuit. It was just not Kate’s year. But is it enough to move her past the upstart version of herself?

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8. NICOLE RICHIE vs. 9. DIANE KRUGER

There was a time, years ago, when Nicole Richie was working with Rachel Zoe and they engineered a totally sophisticated makeover for her.

I guess she got bored. Really REALLY bored:

Like, about to expire from the deepest of ennuis, unless she took a left turn into Nutland, and so she did and then hit the gas. This resulted in a lot more peekaboo stuff than usual; her Met Ball gown was post-apocalyptic cavewoman couture, and she got bitten by the bra bug that also ate Ashley Benson this year:

If we are really going to live in a world where bras are part of outerwear and not simply underwear, then at least make them cute. Don’t just stick your mother’s Playtex under a green doily.

Versions of this dress have turned up all over town this year — and indeed, one is on Selena Gomez in this very competition — and I hate pretty much all of them, because the hem never looks like anything less than a napkin. Or maybe an unsnapped bodysuit. I don’t know. I can’t deal with it. I also, because I am old I guess, can’t look at Nicole’s year in fashion without wondering how badly she destroyed her hair with all that incessant bright coloring. Which I only bring up because it’s the PERFECT segue to that one time Diane Kruger’s hair looked really bad:

As did the rest of her. WHAT IS THIS OUTFIT. She wore it to receive some kind of medal of honor, which I assume was first prize from the International Association for Collecting Evidence for the Abandonment of Peplums.

And this one did things to pants that I can’t even correctly DESCRIBE, much less understand. It’s like each leg has its own cape. But then, The Krugs is a perennial contender here; her unorthodox fashion sense creates as many migraines moments as it does marvelous ones. I was charmed by this Delft demi-caftan, but not everyone agreed with me. Most of you felt something was off with this Elie Saab, too. Sadly, this is just mangy and confusing. And this MIGHT be a jumpsuit? All I know is, it’s laced like a giant sneaker. Finally, this one is cool, but also as if she’s just wearing a random assortment of fabric swatches. (Which, of course, mentally takes me to Rob Reiner’s Cary Grant impersonation in Sleepless in Seattle: “HEL-lo Di-aaaaane, take a look at these swatches.”)

And this was another controversial pick:

I have to be honest, I hate how short it is. And it kind of looks like when someone hacked off the front, it sprayed blood all over the rest. But a LOT of people really liked it? Such is The Krugs.

By even showing you this next photo, I feel that I’m tipping things in Nicole’s favor, because: PACEY.

He is like, “You. Yes, you. I see into your soul. And I just want you to know that I AGREE that this looks like lingerie and I don’t know what she was thinking but LET’S TALK ABOUT HOW GORGEOUS YOU ARE INSTEAD.”

First let’s talk about this:

She’s trying, but… why?

Archives: Diane Kruger and Nicole Richie

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5. ROSARIO DAWSON vs. 12. ANNE HATHAWAY

I had forgotten Interstellar even HAPPENED until we were doing research for this. (I’ve decided Christopher Nolan should go through a whole period of movies that begin with “In,” because we have Inception, Interstellar… let’s add Insouciance and Indistinct and Inedible.) And I hated that movie a WHOLE LOT, but thank God for it, because otherwise we’d have lost track of The Hath all year and we’d have been denied the change to cringe about Rodarte’s handiwork:

I actually feel like the left side is a dying ecosystem. Anne didn’t go QUITE this edgy for the whole promo tour. She busted out this incredibly plain, but still unflattering, blue dress. I hated the yellow-beige netting on this Lanvin. Her black Calvin Klein was screamingly mediocre. And this was a dismal flirtation with the edginess she displayed during her Les Mis junkets:

Looking at it feels like staring into a bag of yarn I cannot begin to untangle.

This outfit chafes at me for two reasons: The pants are very frumpy capris to me, and I REALLY REALLY do not like cream and white together. One makes the other look dingy. That jacket, and her head, would be so much happier someplace else.

But not this place”

NOBODY is happy in that place. It’s the innermost circle of TROUSER HELL.

Which brings us, neatly, to Rosario, who lives there as well at times.

In case anyone thought Emma Stone wore a pants trian first, in fact La Dawson beat her to it by about nine months. It’s a jumpsuit and a cummerbund cape. A cummercape. And it’s physically paining me.

Leather seems like such a strange choice for lingerie, but Rosario’s tastes are nothing if not… unexpected. And unwise. Like this:

NOTHING about this fits. The skirt looks like it’s backwards, the peplum is lazy, the top… it’s just… and why those shoes? Why THOSE. WHY. I want to sit down with this outfit and ask it to explain itself. Then we’d become friends, and order cocktails, and get drunk and talk about how NEITHER of us understands what the hell was happening here:

That is one ginormous birth canal.

More where this came from: Rosario Dawson and Anne Hathaway

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1. LADY GAGA vs. 16. AMAL ALAMUDDIN

Amal fought her way past Duchess Kate to get into this matchup, but it’s awfully poetic that she did. Because now, finally, she and Lady Gaga can go mano-a-mano. Take the gloves off, as it were, which they will do by putting their gloves ON:

Amal took a stab at being impossibly upper crust. It fell short. Gaga, on the other hand, went campy:

I find it hilarious, but it’s also undeniably as if she’s prepared to wash dishes to gain entry.

But they have other common ground, you know. It’s true. For example, they both have spent time on watercraft. Here is how Amal Alamuddin dresses to get on a boat:

And her — interestingly only like two weeks later — is how Gaga does it.

Amal goes to work in kitten heels:

Gaga goes to work in pumps that are the shoe equivalent of rabid feral lions.

Again, here is Amal on her way to her job:

And Gaga heading to hers:

Here is how Amal wears a hat:

I actually love it, though. And I feel similarly about Gaga’s version:

It’s so Jem. Truly truly truly outrageous.

Shall we move into the eveningwear competition? Amal chooses things made of whole cloth that might be too big.

Gaga, however, chooses half-cloth, and snug:

And finally, let’s observe how each lady deals with big city life. Amal chooses to go breezy:

And Gaga opts to be a walking conspiracy theory:

Obviously, Gaga has so much more in her arsenal — like the time she tried to resurrect the Elizabeth ruff, or her red leather suit and mask. She also wore lingerie as outerwear, per usual, dabbled with some nipple, wore some truly fearsome shoes that make it look like she has a sixth toe bubbling out of the bridge of her foot… I mean, basically, click here for Amal’s year in fashion all wrapped into one easy slideshow, and then visit Lady Gaga’s archive. We all suspected Amal would be cannon fodder in this matchup. What do you think? Did she put up a fugly enough fight?