Lucy Liu

I am never going to get over the cancellation of Lipstick Jungle. Wait. Cashmere Mafia. I'm also not ever getting over the cancellation of Lipstick Jungle, except for how Robert Buckley's abs are on One Tree Hill now, so I don't care anymore. But Cashmere Mafia -- though terrible -- also featured completely cracked out costumes for Lucy Liu here, the likes of which I will NEVER SEE AGAIN until Pat Field gets another job on a nighttime soap. HER CHARACTER JOGGED WEARING A FUR. DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW AWESOME THAT IS? The good news is that Lucy Liu herself is prone to wearing crazy, amazing and cramazing items all on her own, so it's SORT of like the same thing, except that so far she hasn't been spotted jogging in a fur. Sadly. While we're waiting for that to happen, let's talk about this:



I think it is both crazy and amazing, and for me, therefore, I'm pretty sure this is falling into the Cramazing category. Sure, from afar, it looks as though the bodice is spotted with dirt that fell from the hydrangea blooming on her bosom, but when you have flora planted in your brassiere, that is simply the price you pay. Am I right? There are few who could work brassiere-planted flora, so if you fall into said category, it's almost a crime not to work it. Ergo, for me, La Liu is NOT GUILTY. Because I think she's working it. I'm not sure if that was clear, there. Is what I am saying.

It's hard for me to evaluate this dress properly -- it's Friday morning and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, so every time I stare at this picture my eyes go fuzzy and the red carpet starts to blend with her waist contours, so that she just looks like a big red blotch.



Once my vision sharpens again, I start to covet her clutch. The rest of the dress has me torn -- there's something pretty and romantic and girly about it, but there's also an aura of Little Miss Muffet poking her legs through her tuffet and going on her merry way. Which is horribly impractical -- if that damn fool spider comes along again and sits down beside her, she's got nowhere to run.

LUCY: I kind of wish I wasn't standing here.

ANGELINA: Hmm?

LUCY: I mean, you have no right to look that hot. You're having twins!

ANGELINA: Mmm-hmm.

LUCY: And you're wearing a color! You almost never wear color. And it's a GREAT color.

ANGELINA: Mmm.

LUCY: I thought I looked pretty cute, but seriously, no woman in her right mind should ever put herself next to you.

ANGELINA: Mmm.

LUCY: I kind of want to make out with you.

ANGELINA: Mmm!

LUCY: Damn right.

So, I might be watching Cashmere Mafia. Trust: it's not good. But it is kind of fun in its badness, and the clothes are predictably Pat Field-y, which is to say, totally irrational for the real world but evoking a sort of delightful WTF? This is FANTASTIC/TERRIBLE! feeling in the television viewer. For example, this past week, Lucy Liu went for a jog with her super-hot neurosurgeon boyfriend:

IN A FUR COAT. In nearly four years of writing this website, I have become slightly better at maintaining my poker face, but I turned the TV on to see this and actually said -- aloud, to the empty house -- "WHAT IS SHE WEARING?"

Later, Lucy Liu was sort of stalking this dog (don't ask. It was a metaphor), and went to the dog park in this:

Obviously. What you can't tell -- because my technology here might be slightly low tech -- is that her sleeves are made....of chain mail. Yes. Awesome/terrible!

But be that as it may, what's the point of a nighttime soap without crazy outfits? Dynasty would have been nothing without its giant fur turbans and ear-level shoulder pads. It's when the show's stars start getting used to being trussed up like a wacky couture turkey (...a couturkey, if you will) and begin showing up in real life looking completely wacked-out that it all falls apart. Like Bonnie Somerville for example:

Truthfully, Lucy Liu herself doesn't look all bad here, as she herself is gorgeous and tiny and shiny-of-hair.

But I suspect she could do with a Hoo-Ha Mafia to swarm her at all times and ensure that she's not wearing a dress so fussy it's practically having a tantrum right there on the black carpet. We have: a bodice, a gray bow, a black bow, a skirt, and a second skirt with a whiff of waist-cape about it, almost like a backwards apron. If I find out that a dying orphan in Africa designed this dress so that she could wear it to this charity event, then maybe I will apply mental mercy later, but otherwise I feel like your clothes generally shouldn't be busier than you are. Oh, sure, she's got a show on the air right now, but I've seen a whole lot of Cashmere Mafia and I suspect it might be about to strap on some cement shoes and plunge into the Hudson River.

And yet, at least it's largely flattering... except for how all that stuff makes her look like she has no boobs, and I'm pretty sure that's not true (see: my aforementioned inability to watch Cashmere Mafia despite how much I want to punch the screen every time Miranda Otto purrs her lines like a really snobby cat). I'm at a crossroads. I think ultimately I have to fall on the "fug" side, though, if only because all that stuff looks randomly thrown in for effect rather than well-planned and visionary. Then again, I both didn't see Phillip Seymour Hoffman at Cynthia Rowley and THOUGHT I saw Michael Bolton the other day at a fashion show -- way, way off base on that one -- so maybe I need my eyesight checked.

Dear Lucy Liu,

Bjork you are not. Just thought I'd let you know.

Cheers, Jessica

First of all, can we discuss how TERRIBLE Cashmere Mafia is? It's like a high school film class project written by a trust fund kid who's decided to replicate Sex and the City, but with more slapstick and less heart. So the production values are great, but it's chock-full of groaners like, "she's wishing him BONE voyage," re: a character who's having pre-business trip sex with her husband. Also, everyone has seemingly been instructed to purr her lines, except for poor Bonnie Somerville, who has already knocked heads (literally) with the object of her affection and for some reason occasionally speaks with a Tough New York accent. I guarantee you her character will, at some point, find herself locked out of her hotel room naked.  It's worse than The Starter Wife. By a lot. I'm just saying.

But, Lucy Liu's hair is really cute in it -- even if she does dress like someone who spent all her grad school years watching Sex and the City and trying to make her friends refer to her inappropriate boyfriend as Mr Big (Pat Field strikes again) -- and I like her, so it's nice to see her making the rounds again. Or is it?

[Photo: Splash News]

Is this fun (the gloves! the color!) or just plain old crazy (the twenty minutes you'd spend standing in your undies, staring at it and trying to figure out how exactly to put it on without accidentally getting your head woven through the bodice)?

So, we don't fug people in costume TOO often, primarily because, you know, they're IN COSTUME. And so I would like, first and foremost, to point out that Lucy Liu is not personally to be blamed for the fact that her character in Cashmere Mafia apparently dresses like Carrie Bradshaw if she were forced to lead a Girl Scout troop camping trip ("I got to wondering," she'd say. "Is bird watching all that different from boy watching? Are these little campers learning skills that will eventually serve them well in pitching tents of a different kind? And in an apartment across town, Miranda was doing something humiliating."). 

[Photo: Splash News]

And while I hold out hope that this costume is from, say, a dream sequence, that hope is small and sad indeed. For do you see the bright pink head bobbing behind La Liu? It is attached to the body of Pat "I Dressed Carrie Bradshaw in Those Hotpants, and You LOVED IT" Field, who is indeed doing the clothes for this show. On one hand, this news is horrifying. If knee socks and sandals become the giant flower pin of 2008, we will be more than alarmed. On the other hand, would Sex and the City have been nearly as fun if the outfits hadn't ranged from Amazing to Amazingly Terrible often in the course of one conversation? Probably not. So consider my judgment officially withheld.

Except on this outfit. This outfit is terrible.