Kristen’s looks for Love Lies Bleeding have been kind of… glam punk boudoir? Is that a thing? I can’t really get my hands around it in a neat phrase. In yesterday’s post, she wore pieces I might not like individually but which I thought she put together intelligently. You know how we like to say that context matters, and every outfit has one? She was the context for those ensembles; she is what gave them the best chance at succeeding. Something about her edge and her grit and her confidence conversed with those pieces, in a way that they needed. It’s the same here. Obviously none of this is an outfit I would put together, and I am tired of bra shirts, but it’s hard to argue that she’s not owning the hell out of that sidewalk.
I think it has to be related to the ridiculous pushback Kristen got her Rolling Stone cover, in which she’s half naked and wearing a jock strap that she is reaching into; Stephen Colbert showed it on his show while also noting that CBS asked him not to, and that he thought that was silly. I feel like I’ve seen equally “racy” shoots with men that don’t cause nearly so much of a stir, and there are LOADS of shoots where women are in traditional sexy outfits and poses that are called “racy” in a complimentary way, but somehow folks decided this one was indecent — presumably, because she’s playing with the stereotypes of what’s masculine or feminine, and suggesting those lines can and should blur, and a lot of folks still don’t like that. Ergo, I suspect a lot of the stuff she’s been wearing since then is her flipping that coin a little, doing a kind of messy glam femme situation as if to say, “You still all worked up? Because it’s actually NOT THAT DIFFERENT.”
