Amanda Seyfriend and Zac Posen

Amanda Seyfried has officially replaced Rachel McAdams as the celebrity I most wish I looked like. Sorry Rachel--you're still gorgeous, and you made a real run at regaining your title in that sublime Oscar dress.......which reminded me of a Barbie I had with a dress inspired by Monet's waterlilies (I used to be really into collecting the fancy Barbies, and would get a new one every Christmas. My favorite was the one with Eliza Doolittle's white racetrack dress from My Fair Lady, because it had a ginormous hat that reminded me of Kate Winslet in the opening of Titanic). On Oscar night, Rachel McAdams completed topped Amanda Seyfried's cake-icing gown, but besides that, it's been a while since anything Rachel McAdams wore made me go, "Ugh, why is she so perfect? (I hear she does car commercials in Japan. One time she punched me in the face. It was awesome.)

Amanda Seyfried, on the other hand, makes me react like that every time I see her, and I can pretty much guarantee that I will go see Letters to Juliet just so I can ogle her shiny, shiny hair (I'm also interested to see her stick her whole fist in her mouth and predict the weather with her breasts, two things that I don't think she does in that movie). And I've had an old issue of Vogue sitting on my desk for a week, open to this page, just to remind myself that perfection is possible:
So gorgeous, right? She's perfectly walking the line between classic and fresh--she has the loose screen siren girls and curvy figure, but looks clean-faced and wholesome. It's like when you see photos of Dita von Teese and think, "She looks amazing, but not quite human..." but here Amanda took that over-the-top look and translated it into an everyday, just hanging at Coney Island outfit. I adored it even more when I saw photos of the dress online. On Amanda, it looks like a staple of your fantasy wardrobe. On this model, it looks like something you'd see at a thrift store and think, "Oh man, if only this were a little less weird..."
Those sleeves! Why are those sleeves ripped open?! It ruins everything for me, because it's one of those really unnecessary designer-y things. It doesn't help that the model has very strange proportions--her neck, in particular, is freaking me out. I should mention that this dress is from Zac Posen's new lower-priced collection, Z Spoke. Of course, "lower-priced" is relative, as this Silk Polka Dot Flared Dress is $495, and then it'll be an extra $15 bucks or so to get your tailor to fix those god awful sleeves. The solid version is a little less offensive to my eyes, since it's in a gorgeous merlot red.

In the Vogue article that the Amanda Seyfried photo is from, Zac Posen does a lot of patting himself on the back for having this new "affordable" line. But it's such a joke, just like every "Steal of the Month" feature. A 500 dollar dress is not affordable! It's not a steal! In New York, it's half a month's rent; in Phoenix, it's 2 months rent. I know that complaining about how Vogue is out of touch with the real world is as old as complaining about bad weather, but I still see red when I read, "Posen is keen to come up with prices that won't break the bank ($78 to a bit over $600). 'T-shirts at T-shirt prices' is how he puts it." Zac Posen obviously hasn't been to a Gap ever in his life, because T-shirt prices should be somewhere between $20 and $30 (if you're too impatient to wait for that v-neck to go on sale). This Z spoke t-shirt--cotton, jersey, and ugly as sin--is $98.

But hey, Zac Posen is doing a collection for Target that comes out on April 25th, and hope springs eternal! Sure, his pieces seem to be at a higher price point that previous Target collaborations, but maybe that'll translate into higher quality. I'm intrigued in a few dresses, but as always, I won't know until I see them in person if they're hideous or awesome. This first dress is so weird that it just might work--it's like sailor meets punk:
And this dress is just pure glam fun:

Wow, this post meandered a bit. Shall we bring it all back with a final appreciation of the late Lily Cane's perfect hair?