Fug Madness 2018, Round 1: Halsey’s Boob Belt Is HERE

A reminder: The photos we show aren’t the ONLY ones in consideration; just a representative sample of everything worn from after the Oscars in 2017, all the way through the Oscars that just finished (so, March 2, 2017, to March 5, 2018). Polls close after roughly 24 hours. Vote on any device, as often as you want to or can. The bracket is here, the Fug Madness FAQ is here, and if you missed the first 16 matchups from yesterday, start here with the Cher Bracket and click forward.

(1) Halsey vs. (16) Kristen Stewart · (4) Paris Jackson vs. (13) Madelaine Petsch · (5) Jared Leto vs. (12) Emma Stone · (8) Tyra Banks vs. (9) Ruth Wilson

(1) HALSEY vs. (16) KRISTEN STEWART

Well, here it is. We’ve been waiting all year — okay, fine, maybe I am the only one who has been waiting — for the Belt Shirt to weave its way through Fug Madness. And that time is NOW. It is HALSEY’S MOMENT. CUE THE HALLELUJAH CHORUS.

Halsey. HalsEEEEEEEEEK. It’s not that she hasn’t worn dresses this year; she has. To questionable effect. Like this super strange Balmain I can’t even parse. Or her messy-feeling Oscars dress, or of course the time she wore one whose slit was more like a third of the skirt. I am pretty sure I can see her pubis.

But a lynchpin of her campaign is her inability to wear a sensible shirt. That belt? Not a shirt.

That bra? Not a shirt. This should also be the “Before” photo that every Nordstrom uses to advertise bra fittings. Any human person who has ever worn a bra just yelped here with recognition of the quadraboob, and the underwire that is not even touching her skin. At least THIS bra fit, although the outfit is still horrid. They almost make THIS bra-based outfit look awesome.

That bodysuit? TECHNICALLY possibly a shirt — I’ll allow it — but it’s also a vaginal wedgie waiting to happen. Or actively happening. This was worn to a Tom Ford show, so it’s presumably all Tom Ford, and I feel like EVEN HE probably looked at it and thought, “Wow, I need to go on vacation.”

That is, I guess, functioning appropriately enough as a shirt, but looks like a jacket that she cut up and redid at Fashion School.

And that’s actually JUST a shirt, right? It’s a giant sweatshirt that she corseted and otherwise stitched up using every sewing technique she learned in pre-school.

And when she finally DOES wear a shirt — a real, honest-to-God shirt, even if it is also one she has knotted — she does it with pants that are REALLY pushing it.

I am afraid of what else the waistband might say.

Kristen Stewart might wear the above outfit, actually, which makes them an interesting pairing. As does the fact that, earlier this year when K.Stew buzzed her hair and bleached it, I titled the post something along the likes of, “Kristen Stewart has Halsey’d Herself.”

And this is what she was wearing in it:

So I guess she ALSO likes a bra shirt (and also having a zipper go all the way up her abs). In fact, she wore another one under this bright orange floral suit whose jacket is inexplicably is missing shoulders. Y’all were more into that one than I was, though. Which is good news for Halsey. Or bad news, depending on how you look at it.

Kristen is also campaigning on this:

Karl put her in that. It’s like Chanel’s take on Sandy from Grease. She also wore this totally slouchy knit-style halter dress with boob pockets. And Chanel put her in a suspender-style dress at Cannes:

She and Chanel are such strange bedfellows. She and Halsey, here, make a strange kind of sense, though. Which one will ascend, and who will go home to lick her wounds and imagine new and impressive horrors?

Archives: Kristen Stewart, Halsey

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4. PARIS JACKSON vs. 13. MADELAINE PETSCH

Hey now! It’s newbie vs. newbie! That’s a thrilling and rare occurrence. Madelaine, as you might know, plays Cheryl on Riverdale. So she’s only been on the scene since that premiered last year, and she has not arrived quietly:

Cheryl Blossom? More like Cheryl BROTHEL. Zing.

And here, Cheryl BRAssom. Indeed, she’s been that twice! I promise I will cut that out, though, in part because I don’t have a good-bad pun for the next outfit.

It’s just… a romper. Maybe she’s Cheryl Blossom from Romperdale. And she does enjoy one: I believe this black outfit is ALSO shorts, although her shoes are admittedly amazing. She also popped up in an aqua dress with black birds on it that managed to look a tiny bit mangy and limp despite having good bones. And then there’s this:

It’s just… a lot. She is a maximalist sometimes, and it can be overwhelming, even if it’s not always objectively terrible. Mostly, she’s an up-and-comer from whom I expect great and terrible things in future years of this contest.

Paris Jackson started making the rounds in earnest this year — to what end, I’m not sure, but she’s backed by designers like Dior and Versace. In fact, Dior saddled her with one of those dresses.

It’s so bad. It’s SO BAD. And what makes it worse is, they are not uncommon. If a celebrity missed it on the first person to wear it, there were PLENTY of other instances to witness it and say, “There but for the grace of my own damn sense go I.” But no. People kept signing up for this. It’s an ugly bra, boxer briefs, and a prototype. STOP THE MADNESS.

Versace ponied up her Oscars dress:

This looks like a Sexy Genie Prom costume.

The thing is, Paris does sometimes have interesting taste. This elaborately colorful piece, for instance, has a lot of artistry in it, although it’s also see-through in parts. And the pants here had potential:

That is, until you notice they’re lace-ups, and MAYBE a little long — unlike this Stella frock, which is essentially… a shirt — and paired with a gigantic translucent hanky masquerading as a blouse. And this outfit isn’t awful, but boy, her hair sure is. There’s always something mucking up the works, keeping the outfits that have a little heat from being great. And the fact that THIS is the best anyone offered her for the Met Gala is just depressing – I mean, the multi-colored semi-sheer that I linked to a minute ago would have been way better. Paris has more elaborate taste than whatever that lumpy, sad black ensemble was. It’s the MET. You go big if you can.

I have NO explantion for that. On her part, or on Calvin Klein’s.

Archives: Paris Jackson, Madelaine Petsch

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5. JARED LETO vs. 12. EMMA STONE

This matchup is essentially Gucci vs. Louis Vuitton. Or at least the beginnings of Emma’s LV partnership; she signed it right before Battle of the Sexes came out in September, which means she shoehorned in SOME stuff from other people. Like this:

That has potential, but is one or even two stripes of variety too many. Whereas this set of navy PJs is one wrinkle too many. And behold this Givenchy disaster, which she actually slid in this past Oscars weekend:

Her hair and head are great, and then it ALL GOES TO HELL. Boob patches! Emma! WE WERE ROOTING FOR YOU! WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU.

Ahem. Pardon. The spirit of Tyra Banks momentarily took me. This Valentino you’re about to see, we missed the first time around, and it seems depressingly non-Emma Stone to me.

Boob patches AND a boob strip, in one eligibility year? Who are you, Emma? WHO? And this doesn’t even include the Louis Vuitton offerings, which included this long buckled white thing, an ivory dress worn with white shoes (THE HORROR), and a glorified blouse that she wore during a phase when she was blonde and everyone totally lost the ability to apply makeup to her face in a way that flattered it.

Do not forget her child-size Oscars post-party dress:

Nor her Vuitton with the elbow flaps:

This style of dress is a scourge. Her sleeves also appear to be chained to her midsection. And, with apologies for how many Emma pics I’m using — it was a worse year than I realized! — we have to conclude with her disastrous satin Oscars suit:

I hope that LV money is reeeeeeally good.

Emma’s section ends with pants so we can transition to Jared, a person whose entire oeuvre consists of pants. And sometimes, they too are satin.

Sometimes they’re worn with a bananas-loud shirt as he strolls through Rio collecting followers like a lint brush, but for humans. And sometimes they’re super, super floral:

Look how long those are. Usually, Jared’s pants are too short. Like these flowery elastic-ankle ones he wore with a totally mismatched green blouse.  Or these:

Or the ones he wore in a piece I noted as Disco Bee Gee, where he comes across like an avatar in a video game in which you have to try and cure Barry Gibb of Night Fever.

True to form, we also got a lot of elaborate Leto coats this year. There’s the one I think of as sultry Mariachi, which is actually a combo of a satin jacket and an overcoat, which are DIFFERENTLY flowered, and there is a pink one that’s studded. And don’t forget pink velvet:

Tie your SHOE, Jared, or you’re going to trip over it and break your beard. That’s also practically underdone by his standards, though nothing was so lax as his Oscars look.

He also wore what I call Thundercats Poncho, something Kesha also attempted, and then this:

I had TOTALLY forgotten about this cape. Reader, I laughed.

Archives: Emma Stone, Jared Leto

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8. TYRA BANKS vs. 9. RUTH WILSON

I am insanely excited for this matchup. In our code, we have to nickname each matchup for the jump to work, so I always make a portmanteau from the contenders’ names and for this one I picked Tyson — and then realized how appropriate that is, because EITHER of these is capable of delivering a knockout punch to the other. There is so much bad between the two of them. We expect some of it from Tyra, but Ruth this year was a strange little surprise.

The return of Tyra to Top Model, plus her installation as the host of America’s Got Talent — she is apparently the premier arbiter of latent ability in this country — was a balm to my soul. She gave us SO MUCH summer content. Like this, which I called Crazy Wallpaper Cheerleader Dress, and this super loud flowered suit that Jared Leto actually would have loved. This entire post is basically catching up with Tyra via her Instagram, and there are some doozies in there, too. And for someone who once ran a cosmetics company — or still does? Is Tyra Beauty a thing anymore? — she is shockingly low on useful lipstick.

Oh, and:

She apparently loves this flavor of batshittery so much, she owns another very similar version:

I can only assume Ciara giving birth is what prevented her from seizing this first:

Ty also went big and princessy at times:

And don’t forget the SLEEVES OF GLORY:

Majestic. So very Tyra. Can Ruth really take on a woman so formidable?

I say yes.

In fact, an EMPHATIC yes.

She doesn’t always dress that … shall we say, elaborately? My notes to myself describe this as Drab, With Nipples. This jeweled silver look is a bit heavy, and the skirt MIGHT be a secret blanket. And here, I just wrote, “What. Are. These. Pants.”

It’s a legitimate question.

This isn’t great from the front, but if you think you’re detecting hints of transparency, you are right. From the side, as she moves, it’s quite pronounced.

If none of that hits you strongly, then consider this: Ruth deployed what I think of as one of the single worst ensembles of 2017.

Sweet holy Hanes, girlfriend. It’s fug. It’s MADNESS. IT’S FUG MADNESS.

Archives: Tyra Banks, Ruth Wilson

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[Photos: Rex/Shutterstock, Getty, Backgrid, InstarImages.com, WENN]