Tuesday, 28 September 2010

Scent To Try Us?

It seems celebrity is merely the means to an end. Forget the talent -or distinct lack thereof -  that first propelled you to fame, it’s all about becoming a money-spinning überbrand and milking it like cash cow Katie Price who is unleashing yet another perfume aimed at Poundland princesses. Now, I totally get why a bloke might fancy firing into someone who smells of Hilary Duff, Kate Moss or J-Lo, hotties with pongs to peddle, but the Pricey don’t seem righty! Anyhow, from October 25th, you too can douse yourself in Precious Love - ‘a tribute to eternal love’, something she’d know all about as Peter Andre - who, stealing a march, launches Mysterious Girl For Women (huh?) tomorrow - will tell you. The latest Jordan juice comes in ‘a bottle that represents her life’ (cheap? plastic? see-through?) ‘with a frosted centre’ (you don’t say!) and ‘topped with her signature diamond cr**’..or was that ‘cap’? Victoria; Paris; Coleen; Chanelle Hayes: what next? L by Maureen from Driving School? Night Gusset by Amy Wino? Chip and Chavvi di Katona? `Seriously wrongpong.

Tuesday, 21 September 2010

Fashioniseateries

Fashionistas rejoice! Buoyed by the success of a Vogue Café, GQ Bar and Tatler Club in Moscow - a dump formerly so starved of fashion outlets, its grateful bling-crazy citizens' sartorial choices make Katie Price look like Grace Kelly by comparison -  publishers, Condé Nast, are reportedly looking at a global roll out for their licensed concept. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t there once a Vogue Cafe where now stands Itsu, in the same Hanover Square building as the publisher’s London HQ?  No matter, fashion exists on a diet of regurgitated trends, so bring it on again, boys!. To the marketing wallahs at Condé N, it seems restaurants are ‘a natural way to extend our brand’: this, despite my supposition that the spaghetti-thin noodles featured in their titles' pages exist on a diet of Evian, Marlboro Lights and gossip and that US Vogue’s pencil-like bobbed boss, Anna Wintour, would surely never resort to anything as common as eating out in public. Over a decade after New York and London’s Fashion Cafés sank like soufflés, despite the best efforts of Naomi, Claudia and Elle, the world has become one vast style-obsessed global village. The label-loving diners of Luton, Lanark and Llanelli are surely clamouring to shell out on fashionable suppers of three steamed edamame beans and half an egg-white omelette. As for those GQ bars, ‘honey, crème de menthe? With your complexion?’ Divine! Let’s hope the profits amount to more than a big fat size zero.  

Tuesday, 14 September 2010

Hollywood(en) Remakes

Most Americans never venture abroad. In fact, very few even have passports. After all, didn't they move the Eiffel Tower and  the pyramids of E-Jipt to Vegas? Could such insularity explain Yankee antipathy towards non-English language films, manna to studios that repackage world cinema for Mikey and Miley Mall-Rat’s consumption? But why do so many slightly more mondaine Brits ('yeh we've been to Benidorm, innit?') also lap up Hollywood(en) retreads? The ensuing car crash when Tim Story hijacked Jean-Luc Besson’s Taxi; Richard Gere’s vague turn as nouvelle vague icon Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless; the leaden Vanilla Sky: remakes rarely shine. Will David Fincher’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo really improve on the enthralling (subtitled) original? I admit, Brits occasionally play their part in cooking up a Stateside turkey. Mercifully, Lina Wertmüller as imagined by Guy Ritchie (and ‘star’ Madge) was deservedly Swept Away at the box office. The latest such Hollywood horror in cinemas is Francis Veber’s appetising French comedy, Le Dîner de Cons, regurgitated as Dinner For Schmucks. If you’re schmuck enough to fork out on indigestible tripe, go armed with Rennies - that's Pepto Bismol, or near enough, to my American friends.

Tuesday, 7 September 2010

FaFoBas

To fill their pages, gossip mags have created a monster: the FaFoBa. That’s those Famous For B***** all, basically (see also ‘nonebrities’). Cretinous reality show losers; witless Wags; famous parents' in-ya-face offspring with zilch talent (you know who you are P, P & K)| and myriad desperate red carpet cockroaches that would attend the opening of bowels: such is the Z list fodder whose only press mention would otherwise be a three line appearance in their local rag’s death notices. Quoted recently in Grazia, voici dress-up dolly Kim (pictured), of US reality-TV Über-FaFoBas, The Kardashian sisters whose 4.7 million followers on Twitter, if rounded up and culled, would not be missed.  ‘Our family has baggage, but like Louis Vuitton baggage you always want it.’ She has a point. It seems Britain has grown an insatiable appetite for the minutiae of the planet’s most pointless baggages’ lives. Inevitably, the bit we relish most is when, their fifteen minutes up, Kim and her like are dumped in the lost celebrity office along with their LV trunks. Call it FaFobafreude.