Olympic Ladies’ Figure-Skating: Fab and Fabber

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m always bummed when the skating is over. (Even if Worlds is in, like, three weeks or something.) It’s always so exciting! And this year was exceptional, especially the men’s — I’m sorry we were in New York for Fashion Week, so I couldn’t really write it up properly, but being able to watch the programs in real time was awesome. You may have seen our piece about the ice-dancers, and now: the ladies! (Again: please don’t fret that I have ignored the Americans. I covered them when I wrote about the US Nationals.)

A final bit of housekeeping: I don’t think there was anyone in the entire world who watched the skating programs over the last few days who wasn’t rooting for Bronze medal winner Joannie Rochette — on the right — whose mother suddenly and tragically died on Sunday. What an unimaginable week she has had, and I am sure that the good hearts of Fug Nation (and the world) broke for her the way mine did. Ergo, it didn’t seem right for me to include her in my essentially frivolous yammerings about how people are not sufficiently BeDazzled.  Hopefully, it will do, instead, to say that she is a beautiful skater (and beautifully BeDazzled) and we sincerely and wholeheartedly wish her the very best.

AND NOW: FRIVOLOUS YAMMERINGS ABOUT SEQUINS:

I seriously love the Gold medalist, South Korean Kim Yu-Na. She’s not only a really, really good skater, she also did a James Bond-themed short program in an honestly fairly fabulous costume that recalls a Gustav Klimt painting:

That’s a compliment from me, and a LOT of disparate cultural references from her. She also looked pretty dang great during last night’s long program:

That is a good costume, you guys. She looks so elegant, yet also SPARKLY. Frankly, if I were the high-powered head of a Korean ad agency, I’d have her on speed dial too. There’s a reason girlfriend is the spokesperson for, like, everything sold in Korea right now. Look at her. She’s so pretty AND she’s a great skater AND she seems bubbly and charming. I’m about to find out what it would cost to make her the official face of GFY in Korea.

Also awesome: Japan’s Miki Ando.

Apparently, she had to run to the rink as soon as she got off her shift serving cocktails on the casino floor of the Luxor, and didn’t have time to change. I applaud her, though, for Going There with her costumes in a way that the rest of the ladies did not. Take also her short program costume:

I am not wholly sure what her program here was about, but in my mind it was the ice-skating world’s take on Joan of Arc. Which, truly, is kind of awesome material, dramatically. You’ve got your religious fervor (hence the spangly cross), and persecution, and BATTLE, and then FLAMES (hence the red material, snaking up her body like the purifying fire of sainthood). Of course, her costume could also be about, like, the annual church fund-raising BBQ, or how awesome the medieval stained glass windows of the world are, but I like my concept better. In fact, if I were a figure skater, I would be working on the program RIGHT NOW. Also, if I were a figure skater, I would be the world’s oldest, most out of shape, worst figure skater ever, but that is beside the point.

Getting right to the point is Japan’s Mao Asada:

You remember how, during the US Nationals, I was all blathering about how every year SOMEONE skates dressed in a genre I like to call, “Imitations of a Romanticized Consumptive 1800s European Prostitute?” THERE YOU GO.

These costumes almost move from “Romanticized Consumptive 1800s European Prostitute” and into “1800s European Prostitute Who Looks Beautiful From Afar, But When Our Hero Approaches, He Sees Her Beauty Is But A Farce, For Her Teeth Are Rotting And She’s Clearly Got Some Terrible Disease That Makes Her CRAAAAAZZZZY.” Which would also be an awesome and creepy program, but I don’t think this was supposed to be said program. I must also ask why Mao — who can, it must be added, jump like nobody’s business, and is all up in the triple axel’s grill in a way that is super impressive — is so attached to the concept of chokers. If we’re going by the plot of the movie ORPHAN – in which the (SPOILER!) crazy European prostitute with a hormonal disturbance that made her child-sized also wore chokers all the time — the sad truth is that she was once secretly held captive in a Romanian asylum where she was forced to wear a straitjacket that cut into her neck and gave her crazy neck scars of insanity. By the way, that story would also be an AMAZING long program. Surely someone is at work on that right now for 2014. I can’t wait!