Vexed Of Kin: The 8 Tackiest Celebuspawn Fashion Projects
Posted at 9:00 AM Dec 02, 2008
By Kathleen WillcoxBack in the halcyon days of yore, everyone from urbane, high-brow fashion designers to rural, overall-wearin' Midwestern farmers sought out their own personal fashion avatars from a stunning gallery of lady aristocrats like Caroline Astor, Babe Paley, the Vanderbilts and CZ Guest. While many were born into the gougères-munching, Don Pérignon-swilling, twinkle-toed fancy ways of Park Avenue, they were well-educated, upstanding dames who used their influence to build museums, launch charities and generally reach out to (however condescendingly) the grubby other half.
That's in violent contrast to the fashion avatars of our current regressive, knuckle-dragging era: Celebuspawn of the Female Variety. And it's not just oblivious Ohio State frosh. Impossibly sophisticated designers also take inspirational cues from these teeny terrors, not to mention pack their runways with 'em. The current crop of celebuspawn, unlike the socialites who preceded them, do little, if nothing to further the cause of anything but themselves. Which wouldn't be tragic, if they didn't insist on shoving their various and sundry "fashion" lines down our greedy little gullets. Or in some cases, being forced down our throats as walking fashion projects in and of themselves. Here, we take a look at their most bloodcurdling ventures, and nepotism-fueled existences as trend-inspiring icons:
8. Angela and Vanessa Simmons
Phat
Farmer Russell Simmons has used the tacktastic Run's
House to excrete his two eldest daughters (with Baby Phater
Kimora Lee Simmons) into the lucrative MTV reality swamp, launcher of
countless fameballs and unnecessary, aesthetically offensive "fashion"
lines. Angela and Vanessa, who also model, enter beauty pageants and
appear in music videos, decided to rip a page out of Lauren Conrad's
fuzzy pink playbook and foist their hideous taste on the world with
what must be one of the most preposterous premises since grillz. Their
"fashion" line (once just sneakers, now clothing, shoes and, egad,
handbags) is inspired by edible dainties. The resulting line, Pastry,
is as appealing as a dust-ball-encrusted Dunkin' Donuts éclair wedged
under your Aunt Ida's bed between her heating pad and economy-size tube
of Bengay. Unless of course lipstick-kiss patterns, gold zippers, jeans
with butt-bows or plum boat shoes with turquoise shoe laces are your
thing, in which case you should totally check out www.pastrykicks.com for other classy looks, like the Pastry Blueberry Glam Chukka and the Pastry Neon Fruit Cinch Sack. Delish!
7. Frances Bean Cobain
Chanel. The name evokes scents of jasmine, rose and sandalwood; visions of ballerina slippers, LBDs and gorgeously wrought (if ridiculously stuffy) suits and quilted chain-link handbags and a history of glamazing (if vaguely anal-retentive) spokesmodels like Catherine Denueve, Nicole Kidman and Audrey Tautou. Now add moon-faced, jutty-jawed 15-year-old Frances Bean Cobain to the list. (One of these things is not like the others.) While she certainly has creamy porcelain skin going for her, she otherwise looks like your average pouty, self-conscious mall chick. If she weren't Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love's possibly (hopefully?) evil seedling, and therefore the source of increasing fascination as she reaches her teen years, Karl Otto Lagerfeld would be screaming "Nein!" and flailing ineffectually about in his skintight Dior suit and aviator sunglasses, slapping assistants with his fingerless black biker gloves outfitted with pinkie rings at the very prospect of including such a well, commoner, in his next ad campaign. Instead, he's probably chortling victoriously over the free publicity it's already received. Because, really, who isn't curious about everything the genetic hot mess that is Frances Bean Cobain produces as she exits adolescence?
6. Rumer Willis
It must kind of suck ass to be Rumer. From a purely demographic standpoint, she should be dating her stepfather. But Ashton's boinking Mom because she's hotter, sassier, sexier and is overflowing with that je ne se qua poor little Jaws will never taste. Luckily for her, nepotism in Hollywood is alive and well. Were she the spawn of say Betty-Sue and Fred of Omaha, her beady-eyed potatohead would be considered a fatal career-sinking liability, but as Demi Moore and Bruce Willis' scion, she's being aggressively marketed as a, gulp, hottie. She's been in gaggles of Demi's movies and magazine spreads, and lately she's been branching out on her own, though not very auspiciously. She's been cast as a lovable loser in The House Bunny and modeled for Wal-Mart fave Ocean Pacific. But someone's got a pal at People. In an inexplicable development, she was voted one of 2008's 100 Most Beautiful People.
5. Nicole Richie
Nicole has turned doing nothing, and not being particularly pleasant, attractive or coherent while doing these nothings, and getting paid for it into an art form. The best part about the Nicole story is how incredibly embarrassing and cheesy her father Lionel Richie's music is. I mean, seriously: "All Night Long"? Ew! But Nicole has managed to harness all of his Grammy-Award-winning heft for her purposes, while successfully jettisoning any and all lame associations. From starring in The Simple Life with Paris Hilton, to various drinking and drug-related arrests, to serving an 82-minute jail sentence, to marrying Joel Madden and popping out her own celubuspawn, to launching a line of accessories and jewelry, Nicole has captivated, infuriated, repulsed, worried and thrilled an hopelessly enthralled public. While her actual achievements are still as thin as her wasp waist, at least she's the only lady on this list with the soul of an entertainer.
4. Paris Hilton
She's arguably the most louche, ludicrous and loathsome celebuspawn. But she's also the original. Paris paved the way for all of the other pampered princesses who turned getting hair extensions, having baseless giggling fits and slinking around town in skanky outfits into a jumbo money-making machine (last year, she claimed she made $200 million). Her parents, who appear to possess the ethical standards of your average human trafficker, blithely pushed her into the spotlight as a child, where she blossomed like a crop of Psilocybin shrooms in a field of fresh manure, and went on to defend her as everyone in America sat down to watch her sex tape, DUI and various other moving violations and short stint in the slammer. Paris, of course, breezed through it all without breaking a sweat (though she did squeeze out some good Crocodile tears along the way) and never failing to plug her hideous line of purses and various vomitous perfumes. Paris starred in the Simple Life with lifelong frenemy Nicole, and though she was billed as the starring attraction, she always came off as the manipulative, bitchy, but ultimately, the dimmer member of the direful duo. (Until Nicole's ouster, at which point the rapidly disintegrating show fell apart completely.)
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3. Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
resident Peaches embodies the Billyburg dream: Get Mommy and Daddy (TV
presenter Paula Yates and singer, activist and actor Sir Bob Geldof) to
buy you a fancy little den of iniquity in the apparently
rough-and-tough but really quite moneyed Brooklyn enclave, have them
bankroll your hard-partying lifestyle and little side projects )not to
mention your carefully edited blend of salvation army/haute couture
threads) so you can look and act like a hardcore punk rocker
without having to deal with the pesky details of sleeping in Tompkins
Square Park, bumming quarters off rich tourists on the Bowery and
constantly being in danger of getting arrested, assaulted or ODing alone
in a scummy, trash-strewn alley. And the cherry on top: At 19, marry a
hot rocker (Max Drummey of Chester French) in an ironically tacky,
slapdash ceremony in Vegas. Peaches neatly fulfills her celebuspawn
duties, appearing in the prerequisite reality show, Peaches
Geldof: Teenage Mind, DJing with Fifi Brown as the Trash
Pussies, landing in several top fashion lists and sexiest women
compendiums, modeling and, predictably (but no less distressingly),
announcing plans to launch her very own fashion line with New Look.
Brace yourself for faux-hippie headgear, hats that resemble lemon
meringue pies and ruched pleather dresses with boob-flattening
bustiers.
2. Kelly Osbourne
Kelly is the undisputed underdog on the list, which makes her sartorial sins a bit more palatable. She's constantly waging a battle with the bulge, unveiling complicated hairdos that defy gravity and mother nature's color palette, applying ghost-face make-up with a trowel and always picking the most unflattering trends to embrace (taffeta? micro-minis? pink hair bows? really?). Our alternating aversion to and sympathy with Daddy's little terror exploded, along with her "career" on the The Osbournes. Kelly's debut album, Shut Up! was a bit of a bust, but she pushed on with another lemon, the TMI-named Sleeping In Nothing, and plans to issue another shortly. The Princess Of Darkness also snagged acting gigs, and (wait for it) in a shockingly original moment of inspiration, launched a fashion line! Stiletto Killers, which consists of tees, knickers and sweat-wear, shuttered in 2006, two years after its introduction. And despite her relatively fug appearance, like other celebuspawn suffering from facial structure challenges, Kelly has also scored modeling gigs. She even strutted on the same Heatherette catwalk as Naomi Campbell. Perhaps our sympathy was rash.
1. Suri Cruise
The indubitably adorable (for now) 2-year-old is on the fast track to pimping herself on her very own reality show, which will inevitably lead to her very own string of DUI charges, her very own modeling gigs and, more importantly, her very own fashion line. The alarming media frenzy surrounding TomKitten's most basic first products started before the first picture of her landed in Vanity Fair. Artist Daniel Edwards took it upon himself to create a sculpture titled "Suri's Bronzed Baby Poop," which he claimed was the infant's first fecal excretion. Breathless coverage of Suri's life, "fashion sense" and general appearance has followed in Edward's noxious wake, with countless "fashion face-offs" between Suri and other celebs' tots in various unseemly glossies (Suri almost invariably wins) and the most vulgar development yet: Forbes' recent crowning of Suri as queen of "Hollywood's Hottest Tots." Because I don't know about you, but I totally crack award-winning business and finance journals to read about sexy toddlers.
