Gucci's frenzied fashion is like an explosion inside a fairytale

At the entrance to a disused Milanese train depot repurposed for the afternoon as a fairytale boudoir (plush seating cubes in buttoned pink velvet, strip-bar glitter curtains, a throaty undertone of dry ice), each guest arriving for the Gucci catwalk show was handed a pink piece of paper. On it was printed a quote by Vladimir Nabokov: “Literature was not born the day a boy crying ‘wolf, wolf’ came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big grey wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying ‘wolf, wolf’ and there was no wolf behind him.”

Alessandro Michele, Gucci’s creative director, likes to layer several characters into an outfit – he himself was dressed for the show in a distinctive Renaissance-biker style that the New Yorker said in a recent profile suggested “a dandy who had run off to join the Hell’s Angels”. And he chose this quote to convey several points.

First, that imagination is essential. (“All of my fashion is an illusion,” he said after the show.)

Second, that Gucci is as much about fairytale as it is about reality. (Many of Michele’s dresses, with their pineapple-top fronds of organza and elaborate embroidery, look as if they might have been conjured into life by Cinderella’s fairy godmother, or stitched by the bluebirds in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.)

Third, that stars can be born from unlikely places: the boy who cried wolf, the villain of the tale, becomes a hero from Nabokov’s point of view.

This is Michele’s fourth season as the golden boy of Milan fashion week, having been plucked from the relative obscurity of the design room. The success he has brought to Gucci – sales of womenswear have risen 66% this year – is particularly notable, being in stark contrast to the ailing fortunes of Prada and Armani.

Fashion tires of its new discoveries fast. But Michele remains compelling partly because although his manner is warm and engaging – the virtual free-for-all backstage is unusual in strictly controlled Milan – he remains an intriguingly unknowable figure. He segues from dense cultural theorising (he mentioned French intellectual Roger Caillois in discussions about this show, as well as German author Elias Canetti) into raptures about his latest best friend, Elton John (“I love Elton! He is amazing! Like a … firework!”).

The stage set for this show had the scent and colour of a seedy nightclub, but a soundtrack of William Blake’s poetry recited over a choral backdrop. Channels of white light beaming down as if from high windows gave it an alternate identity as a sacred space. Michele, who in June staged the first ever show to take place in Westminster Abbey, has said he is not religious, but is drawn to places of worship because “you can feel the power of the people who were inside to express themselves, or to ask for something”.

What makes Michele’s commercial revival of Gucci all the more extraordinary is that, in contrast to the straightforwardly glamorous clothes of the Tom Ford era, the aesthetic is a long way from the mainstream. An endless lineup of clashing sugary pastels, crammed together like the ice-cream trays in a Milanese gelateria, were whipped into a frenzy on the catwalk with the help of disco lurex, cricket-jumper trims, embroidered animals and cryptic legends in gothic fonts. Accessories – the cash cows of any luxury brand – were no less eccentric, with pearl-studded platform sandals and regal handbags hoisted into backpacks by wide satin ribbons.

Jana Kramer and Husband Mike Caussin Separate After More Than a Year of Marriage

After a little more than one year of marriage, E! News has learned that Jana Kramer and Mike Caussin are separating.

People broke the news that the two have parted ways amid the former NFL star entering treatment for an undisclosed reason at a rehabilitation facility.

A source close to the magazine tells them, "This has been difficult for Jana but her priority is being there for her [7-month-old daughter]."

After four months of dating, the two got engaged on her 31st birthday back in December 2014 and were married in May of the following year.




They now-exes have one child together, a baby girl named Jolie Rae Caussin, who was born on January 31, 2016.

This will mark the One Tree Hill star's third divorce, should the couple decide to file papers.

She married Michael Gambino in Las Vegas in 2004 and the two split a few months after.

Then, on the Fourth of July in 2010, she wed actor Johnathon Schaech in Michigan after a whirlwind romance following the two meeting on the set of the film Prom Night.

They announced that they were separating a month after their wedding day, and their divorce was eventually finalized in June 2011.

Kramer was also previously engaged to country star Brantley Gilbert, but they split in August 2013.

In the club: Comic McGee dishes on sandwiches and funny stuff

Kathleen McGee's bio describes her as "the girl your parents warned you about," which is code for the girl who makes you laugh the hardest. The comedian, formerly of Edmonton, has an act that's on the dark and dirty side, but McGee prefers to call it honest. More and more, that's what people want to hear.

The StarPhoenix chatted with the quotable comic before her show at the Capitol Music Club.

On how Wynyard became a part of her set: "I have a joke about Wynyard, Saskatchewan. It's not a positive one. It was probably one of the worst shows of my life. One of the audience members was this old guy who didn't have any front teeth. I asked how he lost them and he said he was herding cattle in the winter and the cow had frozen poop on its tail that hit him in the face. That's a bit that I tell all the time now and it kills. And people come up to me and they're like 'That happened to my uncle.' "

On the best club sandwich she's ever eaten: "The best club sandwich I've ever had was at the Broadway Cafe. And I eat a lot of club sandwiches. When I was in Saskatoon for two weeks I think I ate it six times."

On younger women at her last Saskatoon show: "They were really cute because some of the stuff I said they were like 'What? That happens?' I just said 'Listen to me. I am your leader.' "

On being considered shocking or vulgar: "It's becoming more acceptable for a woman to talk the way she talks to her girlfriends. It's guys that think we don't talk like this. I really love that girls are talking more about their truthful lives and not hiding stuff and not thinking that they're not a lady because they have sex or they drink."

On why she never gives up even though a comedy career can be frustrating: "I just love it too much, and all the skills I learned in business school are gone. I'm proficient in Office '97. I've put too much into this to quit."

On how she's still a baby in comedy even after a decade: "When I get frustrated that I'm not getting things, comics older than me will be like 'Shut up, you've got a long time to go, don't worry.' And the ones that stick it out in comedy are the ones that make it."

On knowing she would make comedy a career after her first time on stage: "It's a total rush. You get up there and you get a laugh and it's like a drug."

On women in comedy: "All over more and more girls are getting into it and I don't think it's going to be such an uneven playing field anymore. But I also don't like women that say it's hard. It's not difficult to be a woman in comedy if you're funny. I know that sounds bitchy, but I don't ever want to be put on a show because I'm a woman. I hate when they say 'We'll put on an all-women show.' Let's just do comedy. Why does it have to be a gimmick? I'm not a gimmick."

On her life becoming part of her act: "My act, mostly because I've had a shady summer, has become a little bit anti-male. But it's not that I think all men are bad, but my experiences lately are what I'm writing about and what I've had lately has been garbage. I think so many girls can relate to that."

Funny Video Imagines Harry Potter as the Villain

Move over, Voldemort, there's a new villain in the wizarding world--and it's none other than Harry Potter.

That's the message of this funny new video from BloodBlitzComedy called "If Harry Potter Was The Villain." Watch the video below to see how things would be different if the boy who lived was actually the boy who lived and then turned evil. It's quite funny, and the last image of Potter is pretty chilling.


The video splices together footage from the various Harry Potter movies and mashes up dialogue to make Harry Potter look like the bad guy. One of my favorite lines comes from Dumbledore, who says: "It is not in the nature of Harry Potter to be forgiving." Of course, that line was originally meant to describe Dementors.

Harry Potter will live on through a spinoff called Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the name of an in-universe Hogwarts textbook being adapted by J.K. Rowling for the big-screen. Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne will play the lead role of Newt Scamander in the movie, which recently began shooting.

THE GENIUS OF MR BEAN (AND WHY WE’LL NEVER SEE ANOTHER SHOW LIKE IT)

As is the case with many great British comedy acts, Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean eventually got too big for his boots and didn’t know quite when to hang them up. With his two high-grossing but poorly received spin-off films Bean (1997) and Mr Bean’s Holiday (2007), Atkinson arguably tarnished the legacy of his physical comedy hero and let us all forget just how great Mr Bean was when he first appeared on the small screen.

One can only hope that Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley’s Edina and Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous don’t suffer the same fate when their much-anticipated movie is finally released (although some would argue that they already have, given the three latest lacklustre reunion episodes).

But now that it’s been nearly a decade since the last major appearance of Mr Bean, it’s easier to look back at this character’s legacy and acknowledge just how high the high points really were. The full series is available to watch for free on YouTube, if you’re in the mood for some retro fun. It also contains the animated series which, while made primarily for younger audiences, still has a fair bit of charm.

The first ever episode of Mr Bean aired on the first ever day of the 1990s, and became a defining comedy of the decade. The half-hour pilot episode titled simply “Mr Bean” featured three memorable acts, but it was the last that became legendary, in which Bean tries desperately to remain awake in church and sings a hearty ‘hallelujah’. It wasn’t until November 1990 that the second episode aired, and it then took the next five years for the full 14 episodes to be created and broadcast on disparate dates.

Atkinson was, by this point, very well known amongst British audiences for his performances in Blackadder and Not the Nine O’Clock News, but in Mr Bean, he found a genuinely unique character with whom his face would be forever recognised. The character developed over several years with sharply choreographed routines and was inspired by silent film legends and Jacques Tati’s comedic creation Monsieur Hulot.

The series became an international success story, largely because it contains almost no dialogue and the physical comedy translates to practically any cultural context. Atkinson and his co-creator Richard Curtis have never given much hint as to the character’s background, although the opening credits, in which he falls from a shaft of light to the earth, does suggest there’s something alien about this person.

And there’s also something immediately, recognisably British about Mr Bean. Consider the episode where he dines out at a top-drawer restaurant and accidentally orders steak tartare, having no idea what the dish actually is. Then, rather than enduring the slightly awkward moment of returning the dish or simply not eating it, he finds every possible place around the restaurant to hide the uneaten raw beef. While it’s Bean’s childishness and occasional selfishness which provides plenty of laughs, he’s at his funniest when he’s just trying to avoid minor embarrassments and social faux pas.

It seems pretty unlikely that in this day and age any network would give a half hour comedy special (as the first episode of Mr Bean was, essentially), based around an entirely untested character, a primetime slot to see if viewers connected. It seems even more unlikely that a network would then be patient enough to air 14 episodes over five years, most of them months apart.

But the thing which makes a series like Mr Bean seem almost impossible today is its content.

While there have been a few attempts at physical comedy-driven television (Frank Woodley’s recent Woodley bought physical comedy into a new template), a show based entirely around physical comedy seems almost impossible now. The concept of Mr Bean was such a simple one and none of the sketches linked together in any meaningful way; it was just show about a man not made for this world trying his best to find happiness and, more simply, a way to exist. We do laugh at him and his extraordinary solutions to life’s problems, but he also reflects back the social anxieties that so many people hold.

No comedy series has ever matched Mr Bean for sheer simplicity, and I’d be surprised if any series did in the near future. Networks are now searching for shows with, if not a complex plot then at least a complex premise, and that doesn’t necessarily leave a lot of room for a creation like Mr Bean: a comedy icon with a singular goal to endear and entertain.