Exit Summer...Enter Sarah Palin, MUSE de la Mode!

Today is Sunday. Tomorrow is Labor Day. The Spring collections start in a week or so. Everybody is getting excited and the Buzz is buzzing. Whatever . I had a close encounter of the truly frightening kind. Sitting by the pool( when you've got the sort of pool I have, one sits by it rain or shine,and it was pouring...) I had this otherworldly ,out of body experience. No I wasn't seeing dead people, only feeling their presence.
Poverty, loss of hope, jobs, a shot at the American Dream, a shot at slow moving targets, a political battle which could bake or brake all of us, let's call it a total eclipse of a HEART, fashion becoming a luxury one can ill afford. Fashion is becoming an afterthought, with little or no validity to ones daily purpose, unless you own a business, work in the business, sell it, push it, shoot it, snort it , eat it or copy it( all of the above are pretty much different ways of expressing the same idea). Fashion is quick becoming a mistress we can ill afford. She's disloyal, will sleep in any offered bed, or rub up against any proffered body with the promise of profit. Haute or low she is a temptress will one thing on her mind:FLEECE. Not natural fabric , but polyethylchloridatednon-greenbutpoisondemi-cloth. I mean RIP OFF the public. Where goeth I with this? I remember now.
This Mistress, this Jezebel is not Heidi Klum, or Paris Hilton, Denise Rich, Miley Cyrus, Hannah Montana ,MK Olsen , Donatella, Judy Licht, Corinne Roitfeld or that other one who runs a magazine. NOPE...it's Sarah Palin. The ex-beauty queen of Alaska contestant. The incumbent Governess/nanny/Au-pair, the Fashion nightmare in need of some down home INTERVENTION. Not the Brittany, Donatella or Makenzie Phillips brand...but honest to god LOCKDOWN.

HAVE YOU SEEN HER? ARE YOU READY TO LOOK UPON HER? I'M SCARED SHITLESS TO ASK IF YOU'RE PLANNING ON VOTING FOR HER?

This creature is begging for our help. She is howling like a muskrat chewing it's leg off that's stuck in a rusted steel- toothed trap. She's screeching like the endangered Juno Junebug for the only assistance we in the fashion community can offer no I mean some constructive fashion advice. She's already on TV, so we have to work against the clock. The convention is coming, the world will be watching(through hand covered eyes) and we gotta do something STAT.

My suggestion is this: We start from the ground up. She's a grass roots Gal,: huntin' and shootin' and trappin'. We begin with sensible footwear that can take her through the jungles of St. Paul. I think it should be Peek toed patent leather Dorsay court shoes from Easy Spirit. Something tells me nothing foreign, meaning anything beyond the border fences of the Rio Grande, west or east of the closest melting glacier, and certainly nothing from the rival state of Europe with those Designer's shoes you can't pronounce, wear or afford. We're going to put her in something truly American(who cares if it's made in China...that's just another one of our territories) which feels like a sneaker but looks like pump.

Next is the outfit. She'll need about 4 different Looks to carry her through the heady, gruelling and life reaffirming experience of the convention. I think we start with something smart, sensible , yet Vice Presidential from A Pea in the Pod. She just had a baby and I understand she's still nursing , so I suggest a dress the first night that can convert to a nursing dress. One with lots of buttons or zippers , in red, which makes that last minute meal for the Palin issue happy and sated. Suits suit her. This is an opportunity for Filene's Basement to pull out all the stops and load her up with a garment rack full of strong shouldered power suits , peplummed and decorated with epaulets and soutache to give her the look of someone spiritually connected to our military forces and the top brass of the Pentagon and foreign policy leaders she doubtlessly will never ever have the opportunity to meet. But it's TV so we gotta make it look good. Governor Palin strikes me as an accessories fan. I can see important scarves mixing with these suits of power. I'm sure Isotoner will supply whatever is needed.

The glasses are a challenge, as I see she has an attachment to very unflattering shapes. Contact lenses might take care of that. One imagines her speech to be mercifully short, so there's no need for vision. She has little or no vision to speak of. The essence of her message are cobbled bits and pieces from Hillary, and Laura Bush, all memorized so no need for teleprompter reading.Whether glasses, cornea replacement surgery or even a seeing eye dog won't help this hopeless wife,mother, sister,niece,cousin, ex-girlfriend,Brownie,Girl scout,Candy Striper, 4-H member, governor, and rifle toting Harpie. Sight will never be one of her 5 senses.

That leaves the hair. Her pride and strength as a woman calls for a hairdo more akin to the look that Brittany Spears popularized when she was going through her rough patch a short time ago. A shaved head would speak to so many women in so many different walks of life. The disenfranchised, the independent thinkers, the mentally ill, the fashion mavericks and most of all the ones whose hair was sheared off in the 18 million cracks of that proverbial glass ceiling. It's a sisterhood of the travelling wig case.

Last but not least is make-up. This is the simplest job of all. We'll get someone between shows, a junior non-payed make-up assistant and give her /him a chance to truly contribute. Sarah is nothing if not all about giving jobs to those who are willing to pull themselves up by their boot straps and really WORK. I can promise this make-up ARTISTE will suggest lots of black under her eyes like pro football players wear before the big game. Something that will both cut the reflection of the cameras flashing constantly and the message that this woman, this future Vice President of our fine country is ready to go to battle. She's ready to follow Bin Laden straight to his cave. Once there, I would bet my lotto ticket she'll offer him the same advice and guidance we've shown her. She'll be the Mary Kay of Foreign Policy and start from the ground up , like she was taught.

I see her suggesting to Osama bin Laden the only shoe that still means something:
Thom McCann.