Yeeeah, I don't think I get this.

For me, enjoying glossy fashion pictorials is never a function of liking the clothing on the models but rather the feelings evoked when I look at the clothing on the models. I like the moods these haute couture houses cast over you with their quirky minimalism (Marc Jacobs, Jil Sander, etc.) and their sexually ambiguous human collages (Dolce & Gabbana, Versace, etc.). Perhaps if I had the means to purchase even an extra button off of one of these garments, I'd consider them less as entertainment and more as real advertisements, but frankly, something tells me I'll never know that transition.

My tinker needs the entirety of the evening to figure out whether I hate, love or just plumb don't get the David Sims' shot Spring/Summer '08 Balenciaga adverts featuring your and my favorite hanger, Jennifer Connelly.

I've been looking at these two photos for a while now, and the only 100% sure conclusion I've made is that her hair is a brilliant recreation of how mine used to look after six straight innings of wearing a catcher's mask and shin guards.

Thoughts?

Now *she* wouldn't wear thigh-high boots (hopefully)

Her interview in the January issue of InStyle wasn't particularly interesting (more of her usual "he's amazing" and "I'm so lucky" fare), but then again I don't really like Katie Holmes for Katie Holmes but rather for the idea of being swept away in a Katie Holmesian fantasy world where all that matters is having great shoulders, dressing like a lady, getting unexpected haircuts and taking photos like the ones you'll see below.

Sigh...

Because looking at her makes me happy (UPDATED again)

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Encouraging "Um, not tonight" excuses everywhere

When I heard a few months back that indie actress Maggie Gyllenhaal was to replace the hotness that is Kate Moss as the face of British lingerie boutique Agent Provocateur's print and online adverts, I thought for sure the media outlet was in the midst of an opposite-day exercise or had accidentally printed "Maggie" instead of "Eva" and "Gyllenhaal" instead of "Mendes."

I mean, I just couldn't wrap my head around why anyone would want to see this chick sporting nipple tassels and a quarter-coverage bustier lying oh-so-suggestively atop a plush velvet settee with a riding crop and a pair of Louboutin peep-toes casually discarded to her left and right, respectively.

I know I speak for both of us when I scrunch up my face, shake my head and put forth a resounding, "Eww, no."

Selecting an individual to represent a particular brand is a tricky task in that the person who is chosen must not only bring with them a style and a lifestyle consistent with the brand's existent reputation but they must also contribute an air of mystery, something that causes the reader to stop, tilt their head and think, "I don't quite know why, but she makes me want to own that."

In short, everything the marriage of Agent Provocateur and Maggie "Birkenstock" Gyllenhaal is not.

AP is a store filled with showpiece lingerie. No bra, even when it's deeply on sale, costs less than $100, and no panty, thong, boyshort, tanga or tap pant would make it anywhere close to the "sensible" side of your underwear drawer. The women who shop at this purveyor of the boudoir fantasy are either celebrities, the very wealthy or the more modestly well-to-do who are looking for that one special set for that one special night. This last group, the group into which I will one day fit, is the group that will suffer most from the AP-Maggie-G. mismatch. We're the ladies who need the ordering process, from the online browsing and aaaah!-inducing zoom-ins to the over-the-top high-quality packaging, to be magical, seductive and everything Victoria's Secret was poised to be back when we were 14 years old and Stephanie Seymour in a lavender balconnet and matching hi-cut brief was the height of female gorgeousness. We as hesitant customers - and AP as well - need this process to be uninterruptedly perfect, because in order to make it to the "place order now" prompt, we must keep at bay the conscience that wants to remind us just how impractical and careless a decision it is to drop $250-$300 on something that could be procured elsewhere for a great deal less money.

And nothing is more of a deterrent than seeing something beautiful look awkward, confusing and flat-out wrong in the photo spread. AP co-founder Serena Rees claims the decision to use Gyllenhaal was in large part due to her "non-threatening [look]," a point which is well-taken in each and every one of these photos.

It's my advice, Ms. Rees, to keep these fug-ass pictures of Maggie out of any respectable fashion magazine and a good distance away from any online screen prior to the "Thank you for your order" page, because whether it's a man or a woman purchasing your underpinnings, I'm pretty sure they want to see a face and body that conjure up the idea of the ultimate female fantasy, not a could-care-less hipster and definitely not "SherryBaby."

For more of this pseudo-sultry granola mess, see below:

Dita, darling, let me explain...

I couldn't really tell you why, but I've always found women who tread odd romantic paths, who not only embrace but flaunt their off-beat sexualities for the camera and whose mouths are as filter-free as my own to be intensely attractive.

There's Angie, Monica, Scarlett, Kate, Rosario, Michelle and now, as difficult as it is for me to admit, Evan Rachel Wood.

I tried to shun her, if for no other reason than to show brunette-to-brunette, Michigander-to-Michigander solidarity to the woman whose place in Marilyn Manson's heart she supposedly stole, but this photoshoot, the full NSFW version of which can be found in the upcoming issue of GQ, pushed me up to and past my willpower precipice.

I'm now a fan.

Tarty, bitchy, dark and for lack of a better word, weird, meet Marilyn Manson's newest scratch-your-head conquest, 19 year old acting phenom, Evan Rachel Wood:

Scarlett at her scrum-diddily-umptious-est (pt. II)

The second tranche of Louis Vuitton adverts featuring Scarlett Johansson was released yesterday, and all I can say is, just like the first group, these six photos do absolutely nothing to bring me on-board the the LV popularity train.

The bags are gratuitously emblazoned with the looky-at-my-designer-baggy logo I so can't stand, the clothes - red patent trench and black schoolmarm-meets-Dita-von-Teese pumps aside - have a confusing mix of Gone With the Wind and Boogie Nights influences, and then there are those cumbersome chunky bangle bracelets -- not my thing, any of it.

But at the end of the day, you have that beautiful face, that copious cleavage and a breathstopping melange of sex kitten expressions.

ScarJo may not make me want to fork over $2,395 for a shearling-trimmed top-handle, but she sure has me reaching for the remote to watch (for the billionth time) the opening scene of Lost in Translation...

Who the flip is in charge of this? (vol. II)

My take on these superlative lists - "best dressed," "hottest," "sexiest woman alive" - editors-in-chief oh-so-love to cobble together for their big, fat Fall issues are nothing more than a subjectively chosen "who's who" of the individuals with whom that particular periodical wanted to be associated even before the initial red team of "fashion-conscious judges from around the world" had been assembled. But despite my frustration at seeing some of the names in Vanity Fair's 68th annual "Best Dressed" list released earlier today, I can't get myself in too much of a huff, because frankly, there is no other way to do it; unlike home runs, Nielsen ratings and units sold, style and beauty cannot so easily be categorized, analyzed and ranked in the objective fashion the way most commodities can.

But as unscientific and incestuously biased as many of these lists' selection processes are, Vanity Fair took this idea of promoting certain women - as opposed to the clothes themselves - to an entirely new stratosphere of absurd.

Ivanka Trump is no doubt striking in the face and has achieved an in-her-own-rite kind of professional success, but better dressed than Penelope Cruz, Cate Blanchett, Sienna Miller, Kate Moss and Rachel Bilson? Come now.

And don't even get me started on Lady Obama's inclusion...

Vanity Fair's 10 Best Dressed Women of 2007:

1. Charlotte Gainsbourg

2. Princess Alexandra of Greece*

3. Marjorie Gubelmann

4. Princess Mafalda of Hesse

5. Fran Lebowitz

6. Michelle Obama

7. Bee Shaffer (daughter of Vogue's editrix, Anna Wintour)*

8. Tilda Swinton

9. Ivanka Trump

10. Renée Zellweger*

*ASJINE approved (not endorsed, mind you, but approved)

**Because it's a nice round number, I thought I'd share with you all that this post marks my 1,000th in 212 days of active blogging. I think that earns me another half-cupcake, yes?

I'd go out with Eva, too

In case you hadn't heard, Jane, one of the small handful of wry, extraordinarily well-written, substantive-but-not-too-substantive fashion magazines has been "let go" by its parent company, Condé Nast.

I wasn't robbed by a shortened subscription or devastated because Jane was the magazine at the center of my if-I-could-have-any-job fantasy (that would be Marie Claire), but I am nonetheless heartbroken both because the writing was that good and for as long as I can remember, it - along with Lucky - served as my reliable, get-me-through-my-layover one-two punch.

With its subtle feminist message, salacious word-choices, generous mix of low, mid and high fashion promotion and the audacity with which its writers intruded upon celebrities' lives instead of simply recycling the tired "tell us how you became so fierce!" fare you find in every issue of People, Glamour and Cosmopolitan, Jane will no doubt go down in periodical history as the foul-mouthed tomboy of the fashion mag crew.

The hot foul-mouthed tomboy with a brain, ambition, glowing skin and a fantastic rack, that is.

Considering its reputation and penchant for being much more Betsey Johnson than Anna Wintour, it's only fitting that for its farewell issue, editor-in-chief Brandon Holley chose as her cover girl the saucy, "I work hard for my body and yeah, I like it" Cuban treat that is Eva Mendes.

Enjoy, and be sure to remember those three magic words...

Click. To. Enlarge.

Scarlett at her scrum-diddily-umptious-est

Once again making Lindsay Lohan look even more like the trash-nasty scrap of coked-up, thinks-a-girl-has-to-be-naked-to-be-sexy B&T she rightly is in her released-this-week supermodel attempt, Scarlett Johansson full-court-presses all us ladies into bi-curious submission in these hot-n-fresh pics from her second round of adverts as the current Louis Vuitton spokestemptress.

Frankly, I don't like the shoes, clothes or any of the oversized, logo-emblazoned luggage pieces, totes, doctor-bag-satchels or quilted-purses featured in either this or her preceding LV campaign, but I must say, Miz Scah-lett never did look better. Or whiter, coincidentally.

And I especially dig this second one below, where ScarJo is lying on what looks like a satin-cushion-covered inverted benchpress with the "Oh pooh, doesn't Daddy want me to finish showing him how I spent all his money this afternoon?" expression we all know and use on occasion.

None of these ads make any interpretive sense to me, but at a visceral level, I'm learning quite a bit about my deep-seeded appreciation for the non-gymrat female form.

Instead of the Bieltastic ass, perhaps I should alter my New Year's resolution and try instead to acquire an all-around - save for the blonde - ScarJo-liciousness. And yes, that is the simplest, 1+1=2, can't-be-broken-down-any-further description I can come up with.

Like I have to tell you -- enjoy.

First round of campaign snaps from earlier this year: